


Introducing the Nelvana Doctor

by DValdron



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 43,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DValdron/pseuds/DValdron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1990, following cancellation, the Canadian animation company, Nelvana, almost acquired the right to Doctor Who to create a Saturday morning cartoon.   Artwork and designs were commissioned, storyboards prepared, and at least four scripts were written.  Then the BBC pulled the rug out from under it.  Some of the artwork can still be found online.  This series is the completely fictional story of that 'might have been.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the beginning

Back in 1990, the Canadian animation company, Nelvana Productions, based out of Toronto, was briefly involved in trying to do a Doctor Who animated series.

Nothing came out of it, but some extremely intriguing concept art with remarkable new visions for Cybermen, Daleks, a teenage black Companion, a 'morphing' K9 and a couple of unique versions of the Doctor. It's beautiful, it's intriguing and it's mysterious, because after a couple of days of web browsing, those concept drawings are pretty much all we know about it. You can find the concept drawings, by the way, on the net. Just google 'Nelvana' and Doctor Who. I'm assuming that if you're a hard core Whodunnit, then you've seen them.

So.... in terms of context, here's what I can tell you.

Nelvana Productions was started in the 1970's by a couple of indy film makers and an animator, doing interesting little shorts and specials. They seemed to have done okay.

Their big ambitious breakthrough project - Rock and Ruin, a sort of funny animal rock opera with lovecraftian subtexts stapled onto romeo and Juliet, cost about 8 million but failed. I remember seeing it, it's genuinely ambitious and quirky.

Their other early mark was the animated section of the Star Wars holiday special that featured Boba Fett's first screen appearance. I don't really care that much - Boba Fett's always been my poster boy for 'Why wearing a jet pack is such a bad idea.' But it's a historical thing.

They had their ups and downs in the eighties.

Between 1985 and 1987, they did two Star Wars franchise animated series - Droids and Ewoks. Droids seems at least somewhat sophisticated in concept and execution, lasted 13 episodes. Ewoks made it to a second season, but that season dumbed down fast.

Then they had their big score with the Care Bears movie. A lot of their business model as animators seemed to be licensed toy and media products, although they would dip into various experiments.

As far as I can tell, Nelvana's commercial and production interests were geared towards American sales and American markets. So Doctor Who was an interesting choice, given that it's largely unknown to the mainstream. I think that their interest was probably piqued by PBS running and capitalizing heavily on the series in the 80's, and the cult status it had acquired there.

It's ironic because around the time that Nelvana was sniffing around, the series was in trouble in England, it had just been put on hiatus in 1989, and as far as the BBC was concerned, temporary was permanent. This would be the broad time frame of the budget freeze or cutbacks, Michael Grade, Colin Baker's troubles, Sylvester McCoy's tenure, etc.

Still, I think that they'd have been taking a rather big risk, given that they weren't being backed by a toy company or tapping into a mainstream market franchise.

On the other hand, they were still young enough, they might have had a reputation for and interest in quirky satisfying projects. And Doctor Who might have given them a degree of freedom that they didn't get from working in the Lucas garden. 

Mid eighties animation, including Saturday afternoon animation was in a sort of golden age. It was still marketed and aimed at the children's and early teen demographic, but you had genuine characterization, credible animation, continuing stories. 

So while I shudder at the thought of a 'Carebears' level Doctor Who, it's more likely from the drawings and from what we know that they could have done something quite fun.

Any adaptation involves changes, compromises and interpretations. Very few creative people are satisfied merely to photocopy. Absolute fidelity is neither possible nor even desirable.

The reality of producing commercial animation means that you do have to respect certain limitations. Your audience is are children and early teens, filtered through the censorship and mores of commercial television stations, and station regulatory practices. They're not interested in being cutting edge, adult or controversial and they're not terribly concerned with creator issues. You can still tell good stories, and even stories that adults would enjoy. But your storytelling will be circumscribed. While there are major visual opportunities in storytelling, allowing for backgrounds, vistas, and shots that and effects that might cost millions to achieve, there's also a complex production chain that requires you to simplify, and the physical limitation that every single frame has to be hand drawn and coloured. So your drawings don't get too complicated. In the 21st century, computers have revolutionized production process. But in the 80's, it was still very much traditional technique, amplified by the exploitation of Asian manpower.

For any number of reasons, any adaptation or envisioning will depart from the source material, but that's a thing to celebrate. Honestly, the original Doctor was a frail old man of dubious morality who sabotaged the Tardis for petty reasons in one adventure, tried to throw his companions into space in another adventure and almost brained someone with a rock - he got nicer, but the actors physical health meant that other characters often did most of the work. Consider that in contrast to either Pertwee or Baker and the complete reimagining of the character.

If you go looking up 80's cartoons... there's a shitload of them. The sheer volume of Saturday cartoons is astonishing. Not just Saturday morning, but Saturday afternoons. There's a wild diversity ranging from the infantile to the sophisticated. The 80's was an era of cartoon explosion on television.

To understand what happened here, what drove it, and what was produced out of it, we have to take a step further back.

First thing - Animation is hard. Really, I know animators. Basically, it's hand drawing each animation cell - which involves sketching, pencilling, inking, colouring. Then doing it again and again, twenty-four drawings per second, 1440 drawings per minute, 20,000 drawings for a fifteen minute short. That's time consuming and expensive, and it calls for huge organizational requirements. The indy animators I knew were one man operations. But more commercial animation often uses several people or dozens or hundreds of people working in a studio, and coordinating those efforts, making sure that the transitions from one person or one group to another requires astonishing work.

Back in the thirties and forties labour was fairly cheap and organizational resources cascaded up. There was a market in the movie houses for comedic shorts, along with newsreels, serials, A and B movies. Basically, a movie experience back then could run five or six hours. So animated shorts found a home - this was the golden era of mickey mouse, bugs bunny and their respective pantheons.

That golden age slowly came to an end in the postwar era. Television came in, and the format of the movie studios changed. The newsreels went, as did the serials, the focus shifted to movies - for a while comic or animated shorts hung on as a sort of warm up act to the movie. But a lot of the market dried up for animation.

Instead, the animation market moved to television - with mixed results. If you were around for the animation of the 50's and 60's into the 70's, I think you'd be struck by what a mixed bag it was. At the high end, Disney and Warner Brothers had found a new life for its shorts on television. For the rest of it... it was pretty harsh stuff.

The thing with television, as Harlan Ellison said, is that it doesn't suck, it 'sucks' - it is the great devouring maw of talent. Borscht Belt comedians might spend years on the club circuit refining their gags, and one visit to the Ed Sullivan show.... all their material is gone, broadcast on national TV, they've used it up and now they have to come up with a new routine because everyone's seen their old one.

You have a cartoon in the can and want a Saturday morning cartoon half hour? Terrific. What about next week? And the week after? And the week after that? Twenty to forty thousand new drawings each weak, plus sound synch, dialogue, music, the whole nine yards. Impossible.

Unless you started looking for shortcuts, lots and lots of shortcuts. Did we need full motion on everything? Backgrounds and foregrounds became separate things, and a good set of backgrounds could be done simply and re-used again and again and again. The entire person didn't have to be animated, just the part that apparently moved - when Fred Flintstone or Yogi Bear runs, their bodies are absolutely stiff, just those two little legs at the bottom pumping away. And certain motions, like running, once you had those you could save them and bring them out whenever you liked. Cartoons were often about saving drawing time every which way. Simply running stationary drawings accompanied by narration or dialogue was done in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. Pan and scan offered opportunities, or zooming in to different parts of the frame to give the illusion of movement - Marvel's Marching Heroes did that. There was even one effort which pasted a live actor's moving mouth and lips to a cartoon characters's drawing to give the impression of animated life - a technique now employed with Annoying Orange. This all drove a mostly stylized, hyper stylized form of animation, with characters stiffly posed and moving like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

This animation, wretched as it was, gave us Scooby Doo. It also gave us Fred Flintstone, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss and the rest of the Hanna Barbra pantheon. I remember that Hanna Barbra used to be quite dominant - Fred Flintstone got his own movies. But for whatever it was worth, their animation went to hang with the dinosaurs. We don't see Fred and co around much any more. Scooby Doo is really Hanna Barbra's only great survivor.

But then, and I put this around the 80's, animation changed dramatically. Suddenly, you had the Ghostbusters, He-Man, GI Joe, Strawberry Shortcake, Thundercats, Transformers, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Popeye, Felix the Cat, Muppet Babies, Bravestar, Beetle Juice, Jem, Gummi Bears, Carebears, Smurfs, Hulk Hogan-Rocking Wrestling, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite, Heathcliff, Happy Days.... this is the tip of the iceberg.

There were something like three hundred or more of them, and while most were crude by today's standards, almost all of them were far more polished with higher levels of animation than the Hanna Barbra stuff of the 60's and 70's. Their target audiences ranged from pre-school toddlers, to as high as twelve to fourteen.

So what happened?

I'm prepared to make some guesses, and it involves the intersections of commerce, technology and culture.

I think that one - but only one - of the key changes might have been the discovery, or exploitation, or just the development of effective communication protocols with the giant animation factories of Asia.

The great bottleneck for animation was always labour, human labour - every cell having to be hand drawn and photographed. That labour was skilled, specialized, and in North America, it hadn't been cheap for decades. So throwing in that big pool of cheap Asian drawing labour was probably revolutionary, at least in terms of the capacity of the industry.

This probably wasn't as easy as it sounds. You had to translate your scripts and directions into an alien language, an alien culture, directions and ongoing changes and adjustments had to surmount huge barriers in terms of distance, time zones, language and culture. Actually achieving a trans-pacific production process is a huge accomplishment in its own right. And not something you wave a magic wand to just appear for.

In the seventies, some Japanese animation had appeared on North American shores - Macross, Battle of the Planets, Star Blazers, showing up in syndication. They're commonly understood as the fore-runners of the later wave of Japanese animation, or Anime that would take North America by storm in the 90's and 21st century. But I think that they should also be regarded as the interface point or introduction of western animators to the Asian production capacity. People had to first learn what was out there, and what it could do at home on its own, and what it could potentially end up doing for them.

Collateral to that, of course were probably advances in telecommunications - it got easier and easier to travel back and forth, to quickly, reliably and safely ship things back and forth, to make phone calls, send faxes, to integrate communication and business protocols - remarkable when you think of it - possibly not even paper sizes were initially compatible.

The second great change was probably commercial. Bear with me, because I've got absolutely nothing but my own seat of the pants here. Reagan came in, in 1980 on a wave of deregulation, including in telecommunication. 

I think that one of the effects of that is that it created children as a viable target audience in a way that they hadn't been in the 70's or perhaps even the 60's. Basically, children were the new untapped market, buying for children - toys, toy systems, accessories ranging from blankets and bedspreads to lunch boxes.... I suppose this had always been there, but now somehow, suddenly, it kicked into overdrive and everyone was going crazy for a chunk of that child viewing demographic.

And when I say everyone.... Did you know that Laverne and Shirley had a cartoon show? Happy Days? Mister T? ALF? ALF, a sitcom about a alien played by a puppet was practically a cartoon anyway, but it had its own spin off cartoon. Successful television series were hiving off their animated versions, sometimes taking huge liberties. Any kind of cultural production, a successful movie Godzilla had a cartoon show, so did the Ghostbusters, and Rambo. Ghostbusters and Rambo were by no means children's movies, but as action/adventure, there seemed to be enough lead into young adult that they could be used to exploit that demographic.

Of course, every segment of the children's demographic was being targeted with napalm. However it worked, wherever the incentive came from, it seemed that anything that posed even tangential interest to kids would inspire a show.

Under the circumstances, it's amazing that there was no Doctor Who animated series....  
The third factor - well, the rabid hounds of commerce had been unleashed on our nation's innocent children, to pillage and devour until their guts burst.

Someone had to have let those dogs out.

I blame Star Wars.

See, here's the thing. Star Wars was basically a gigantic and overwhelmingly successful fantasy adventure. It redefined everything in so many ways. But one of those key ways was that it was as much a teen or children's adventure as anything else. It was family friendly. 

He-Man, Thundercats, Bravestar, Thundarr, Transformers, Ghostbusters, they all explicitly absorbed the Star Wars lesson. The genre had been re-defined and remade.

And there were some good reasons for this - theatrically, Star Wars had been followed by Star Trek the motion picture, a bloated special effects bomb, Battlestar Galactica, on star wars level and incredibly expensive, Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars a production so ambitious and expensive he spent 30 years recycling the effects footage, an the Italian Starcrash - an object lesson in what it was like when you didn't have the budget and technological sophistication.

There was a smattering of Star Wars inspired B-movies - Corman's Space Raiders, some Italian trash, efforts here and there. Charles Band's 'Metalstorm.' But the truth was that for live action films, Star Wars was almost impossible to replicate as a B-movie with any credibility. It required a high level of technological and organizational skill and quite a lot of money. If you didn't have that, you ended up with Space Mutiny or some other trash.

It was the same thing with other iconic films - the steps from Conan, to Beastmaster, to Barbarian and the Sorceress..... well, that first step was often right off a cliff.

It's why Alien proved to be such a successful model - it could be done cheaply.

The thing was that elements of Star Wars, the ships, the equipment, the settings in outer space or alien landscapes, the monsters and aliens, even the derring do battles.... if they were incredibly expensive to produce on live action.... they were cheap as line drawing. If you wanted to riff on star wars, animation was the way to go.

And overnight, Huckleberry Finn and Alice in Wonderland and all those others are out the window. Children's and Teen stories are redefined almost completely as Fantasy/Sci Fi Adventure.

The other impact of Star Wars was on the minds of the wolves of commerce - all that money Lucas made from merchandising, the insane levels of money - you could get a piece of that. Toy manufacturers saw all sorts of wonderful synergies in hitching Rainbow Brite or He-Man to a cartoon, a walking advertisement, a play structure, a continuing vehicle to promote and push every kind of merchandise they could come up with. Wow.

And so, introducing the cartoon Doctor Who...


	2. Episode 1,  Pilot - Invasion of the Cybermen

Aired May 5, 1986. Opening scene of a regular urban street. An armoured car pulls up to a bank. Vagrants in hoodies and overcoats converge on the armoured car. Throwing off their over coats, they are revealed to be essentially metal skeletons, with glowing red eyes and handle bars. They tear overturn the armored car, breaking open its doors. As police cars arrive, one of them bends metal light poles over to create a barrier. Two others enter the bank, tearing a bank vault off its hinges. They ignore a hail of bullets, working calmly and methodically, and then vanishing.

In the next scene, the street is a wreck with smashed cars, broken light poles. An overweight police detective is on the screen taking witness statements. A tall man with dark spikey hair and a flowing overcoat comes up to him. The overcoat has a question mark on its tail. He’s accompanied by a young black girl.

The man introduces himself as the Doctor, and says he’s been called in. He asks what the Detective can tell him. 

The Detective says "Doctor Who?" It’s a question which will appear in every single episode. 

The man replies, ‘Just the Doctor’ introduces his companion, Casey Jones, and asks what has happened. 

The Detective tells the story of robots trashing the place. 

The Doctor corrects him - ‘Cybermen.’ Robots? Cybermen? 

What’s the difference? 

‘Cybermen used to be men, before they gave up flesh for metal bodies.’

After determining that the Cybermen only stole money, the Doctor expresses puzzlement and departs.

Cut to - the time vortex, a swirl of strange colours and shapes. Occasionally a spaceship or a dinosaur or a skyscraper drifts past in the void. The camera focuses on a strange blue box, with the words ‘police’ written on it.

Inside, the Doctor and Casey muse over the puzzling development, while what appears to be a floating breakfast tray with a stylized dogs head tries to get them to take some tea. What could Cybermen possibly want with money? They don’t need to eat or breath, their power source provides them with energy, and there’s nothing that Earth people could sell them. 

Casey asks if the Cybermen are from space. 

The Doctor explains that they are indeed. They used to be just like Earth humans, before they traded their bodies for metal, now they want to convert everyone and everything into beings like him. They’re one of the greatest threats in the Universe. 

Casey points out that they didn’t try to convert anyone. 

The Doctor agrees. There is a mystery afoot. 

There is a beep at the console. The Doctor looks at it and says that there’s been a development next Thursday. They will go there right away. Casey says it’s pretty handy to have a time machine.

On the side of a Road, the Blue box materializes. 

The fat detective is surprised to see the Doctor again and asks where he came from. The Doctor indicates the Police Box. He asks for an update. 

The Detective tells him that the money stolen by the Cybermen has been found abandoned by the side of the Road. It’s as if they didn’t even want it. There’s no trace of the cybermen.

Over the next few weeks, however, there are more robberies - of banks, of jewelry stores, of gold bullion from Fort Knox. In each case, the cybermen are orderly and methodical, exhibiting superhuman strength and oblivious to hails of bullets. In each case, the Cybermen later abandon their stolen goods once they have escaped. Sometimes throwing it away, sometimes giving it to homeless people.

Each time, Casey Jones complains that they have a time machine, but they always arrive late. 

The Doctor explains that time travel is not easy. Time is always moving forward. It’s hard to get to exactly the right moment. You arrive mostly after. Sometimes before.... This inspires the Doctor. He pilots his time machine to the beginning of the original robbery, before it takes place.

On the street, he goes up introduces himself and asks a Cyberman what the plan is? Why are the Cybermen robbing an armored car when they’re just going to throw the money away? 

The Cyberman asks if he intends to stop them. The Doctor replies that he is a time traveller, to him, this has already happened, and the time laws forbid changing the past. 

Satisfied, the Cyberman explains: They don’t care about the money. They care about demonstrating their strength and power. When the armies of the world see what metal bodies can do, they will all want to convert to steel, and the Cybermen will do it for them. 

The Doctor asks what if they refuse? 

The Cyberman says it doesn’t matter. Earth is full of armies, some of them will. Even if none of them do, then criminals will want to convert, and police will have to convert to keep up with criminals. One way or the other, it will spread, and eventually, the Cybermen will convert the entire planet.

The Doctor congratulates them on their ingenious plan and departs. He cannot be in two places at once, and he needs to leave before he arrives. 

Casey asks if the plan can possibly succeed. 

The Doctor says that there’s one way to find out - check the future. The Police Box vanishes in a swirl of coloured lights, travelling into the future.

Stepping out, the streets are filled with marching Cybermen. One of them spots the Doctor and Casey and announces that they have not yet been upgraded - they must stand by for conversion. The Doctor and Casey flee. 

The Doctor explains that alll Cybermen worlds are like this - no war or hunger or disease, but no love, no friendship, no beauty, just another world of machines.

Casey asks what we can do. 

The Doctor says he cannot change the past. But he can still change the future. They go to Generals and politicians to try to get them not to agree to converting, but none of them agree. 

Casey complains that the Cybermen are too strong, and that we need a weapon to weaken them. 

The Doctor says that weakening them is the key!

All Cybermen draw from a central power source, the Doctor explains. That is their ship. All they have to do is find their ship and destroy the energy source, and the Cybermen will be almost powerless.

The Doctor and Casey travel into space in the past. 

In orbit, they watch the Cybermen ship come to Earth. They can see that it is damaged and that there is a forced crash landing. Casey asks if they can stop it, but the Doctor says it has already happened. They watch it land.

Then the Doctor materializes his Tardis inside the Cybermen's ship in the modern day. He and Casey, and the robot dog K9 sneak out, but are immediately caught. The Cybermen announce that the Doctor will be taken for immediate processing into a Cyberman. But they don’t know what to do with Casey since she is too small. 

K9 announces that he is a cyber-dog, and that he will take her to processing for children and pets. The Cybermen are somewhat confused, they've never heard of Cyber-dogs, but after thinking it over, the Cybermen agree. 

As he is lead away, the Doctor tells Casey it is all up to her.

In the processing chamber, the Doctor stalls for time and tells the Cybermen that he can help them fix their ship and be on their way to wherever they were going. They don’t have to bother with Earth. They can go and fight whatever they were fighting, Daleks or whoever. The Cybermen tell them that their mission is to convert all human life to Cybermen, and that they can do that here as easily as anywhere else.

Meanwhile, Casey and K9 make it to the glowing power core of the ship. Casey takes an explosive from inside K9 and attaches it to the power core, then they flee. Behind them there is a mighty explosion. All the lights go red. In the processing chamber, the Doctor excuses himself, unstraps from the processing rig, brushes politely past the ineffectual cybermen and wanders back to the Tardis.

Cut to street scene of another Cyberman robbery - after ripping the doors off of cars and overturning vehicles, they lose all strength. Suddenly, they are barely able to lift small objects. They fall over. 

Police arrest them almost without resistance. A little old lady pushes a cyber-warrior around, while another struggles futilely to steal a rattle from a baby.

Cut to the Doctor and Casey looking at a viewscreen. On it, Cybermen sit neatly in prison cells, while one uses a walker to get around. 

One of them seems to look directly into the viewscreen.

The image blurs and waves, and then there is an old man in robes in the viewscreen, who congratulates the Doctor for stopping the Cyberman and tells him that his sentence will soon be over and that he can return. 

The Doctor says he has no wishes to return. The screen goes blank.

Casey asks about the reference to the sentence, does that mean that the Doctor is a prisoner? But how can he be a prisoner if he can travel anywhere in space and time. 

The Doctor says that his sentence is to guard the earth.


	3. Episode 2:   The Cyberman Conspiracy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Cybermen are back, with a new plan to take over the Earth. Can the Doctor stop them? An adventure involving sofa pillows and a flower vase on a leash.

Night. A man is running down the street. In panic, he runs up to a policeman, but when the police officer turns, his face is metal with glowing red eyes. Terrified he runs down the street, but an immense street cleaning machine, all gears and pistons appears. He runs into an automated factory, past rows of shadowy machines, industrial robots assembling more machines. He takes a crowbar and begins smashing the machinery. Reaching the end of the hall, he finds an emergency phone. He dials hastily. He announces "They are coming, the metal men are coming to take us all." He turns back and freezes. Shdowed metal faces with glowing red eyes close in on him. He screams....

The Doctor is showing Casey Jones how to surf/snowboard among the floating icebergs of a gas giant. The background sky is green. Pale yellow icebergs float in the atmosphere. The camera zooms in and out. 

Casey laughs and asks what happens if they fall. 

The Doctor answers ‘nothing’ - as a gas giant, it has no surface, just different layers of atmosphere.

The Doctor’s watch goes off. He pulls it from his coat and opens it. A star wars type hologram is projected of the old robed man we saw at the end of the pilot episode. 

He advises the Doctor that the Cybermen are active on Earth again. Despite the Doctor’s protests, he tells the Doctor that he must return and deal with it, and flicks off. Casey Jones ask who the old man was, he tells her that the man is named Magnar and he is a Guardian of the Time Lords.

Annoyed, the Doctor takes the Tardis back to the Time stream, trying to locate the Cybermen in their next plot. 

Again, there is an establishing shot of the Tardis floating in the time vortex. A Roman statue floats past, along with the Wright brothers plane, Mount Rushmore and the Mona Lisa and Washington crossing the Delaware. A pterodactyl flies by, and an Anik Communication satellite can be seen in the background. 

Inside the Tardis, the Doctor is at his console, using it to scan - as shown with pictures on the view screen, complaining that the Cybermen should have gone into power-down when their power source was destroyed. They should not be active. 

Casey asks what is it that they want.

Cut away to an image of blue skinned people on an alien world. In voice over, Doctor tells her that Cybermen used to be humans, who traded in flesh and blood for metal bodies. There are shots of the people going into factories, of mechanical arms and legs, and of rows of cybermen marching out. Soon the entire world is filled with marching Cybermen. Spaceships begin to leave the planet. 

Casey asks if the Cybermen want to conquer the universe. 

The Doctor explains that the Cybermen do not see themselves as conquerers but missionaries, their mission was to convert everyone to metal like themselves. The trouble is that they lose their souls in the process, the world of cybermen is a world without suffering, but it is also a world without love, or compassion, laughter or happiness. 

Casey says that is unpleasant. 

The Doctor tells her that there are only a few cybermen on Earth and billions of humans, they can never succeed. 

Casey suggests that maybe they are only converting a few specific people. 

The Doctor tells her that the question is who? World leaders are obvious, but would be spotted too easily. They need to convert people without being noticed. 

K9 asks if it can accompany the Doctor this time. It will utilize its disguise mode. To demonstrate, it turns into a toaster, a ghetto blaster, a blender and a vase with flowers.

Finally, the Doctor expresses satisfaction - Here we go. 

The Tardis console beeps. The frenzied cries of the man in the prologue. On the screen we see his contorted face, and the red LED eyes closing in.... 

The Tardis materializes at the factory, where clean up is under way. The fat Detective, Monty Burns, is overseeing the investigation. 

The Doctor walks up with Casey. 

The Detective notices him, and asks why he has a toaster on a leash. 

The Doctor says he likes toast. The Doctor then asks about the kidnapping.

The Detective replies that there is no kidnapping. A disgruntled engineer broke into this factory and wrecked it. The person is not missing, he is avoiding the law. 

Just then, the factory owner, a tall, very fat man with big hair, comes over to ask why nothing is being done about these vandals, and demands to know who the Doctor is. 

They are escorted out of the building. But the Doctor is cheerful. Certainly, there has been a kidnapping, he tells Casey, more than one, the police just don’t know it. 

Casey asks what do they do next? 

The Doctor asks what Cybermen want more than anything? 

Casey responds to make more Cybermen. 

And what do they need to make Cybermen? A factory.

So the thing to do, is to look for more missing people connected to factories. They disappear into the Tardis.

Cut to a scene of another factory floor, this one very busy. The Doctor and Casey are standing above the factory. 

The Detective appears, quite upset. He demands to know what this report is of a missing person here. And why the Doctor has a vase of flowers on a leash. 

The Doctor replies that he likes flowers, and that the factory owner has gone missing.

The factory owner comes up behind the Detective, another very large, very tall man with big hair. Just as I expected, says the Doctor. He announces that he is the factory owner, he is not missing, and he demands that these trespassers be arrested.

The Doctor introduces himself and offers to shake hands. The factory owner refuses. The Doctor reaches in and pulls a pillow from under the factory owner’s shirt, handing it to an astonished Detective. He then starts to pull more pillows, cushions, teddy bears, stuffed toys, throw rugs, all manner of things.

Suddenly, the factory owner is revealed as a cyberman, wearing a mask and wig, who has been using pillows to conceal his gaunt metal skeleton. The Cybermen have been quietly taking over factories so that they can start building new Cybermen, the Doctor announces triumphantly, kidnapping key people in the process, and replacing them with Cybermen in disguise.

What do we do now, Casey asks. 

We run! The Doctor tells her. 

The trio flee, pursued by cybermen. 

The Doctor assures them that there is nothing to worry about. 

The Cybermen have a limited power source, and it takes a lot of energy to convert new Cybermen. All they have to do is outrun the Cybermen until their batteries run down. They turn a corner, and find themselves faced by Cybermen. 

Surrounded, they flee down a hallway, to the end where they lock themselves behind a steel door. They’re perfectly safe, the Doctor assures them, the Cybermen don’t have the power to get through the door, just as a steel fist crashes through it.

In the next scene, the Doctor, Casey and the Detective are prisoners of the Cybermen, being taken back to their hidden base. 

Casey is very cross with the Doctor, but he couldn’t be more pleased. 

Arriving at the base, they are brought to the Cyber-Leader who asks why the Doctor has a kitchen blender on a leash. 

The Doctor says he likes smoothies. The Cyber-Leader orders the blender to be put in the recycling bin for parts. 

The Doctor and his companions are sentenced to the conversion chambers.

Arriving at the Conversion chambers, they find all the other kidnapped men, to the Doctor’s pleasure and satisfaction. The Cybermen don’t yet have the facilities for large scale conversions, that’s what they needed the factories. He knew if they let themselves be captured, they’d be taken to where they could find the rest of the victims and rescue everyone. 

Casey points out that rescuing everyone is going to be difficult since they are captured.

The Doctor replies not at all. He throws his pocket watch at the cyberman guarding them, using its long chain to loop around its legs and trip it. As it falls, he presses the release lever, setting all the prisoners free. He snaps open the watch and tells K9 it is time. 

K9 morphs back into its robot dog form, and comes sailing down the corridors.

The Cybermen break into the conversion chamber to find the Doctor ready to greet them, along with Casey, the Detective and a mob of angry freed humans. The Doctor tells the Cybermen that there’s no need for a fight, they’ll just be leaving. 

The Cybermen say that they will not allow this. 

The Doctor tells them they should leave too, since he has activated the self destruct. 

The Cybermen inform him that the self destruct cannot be activated from the Conversion station, but only from the bridge by the Cyber-Leader. At that moment, the voice of the Cyber-Leader announces count-down to self destruct. 

K9 has come through, the Doctor says. The Cybermen back down.

Afterwards, Casey and the Doctor are back in the Tardis. The Doctor is happy with how the adventure turned out. The kidnap victims are all rescued, the authorities are on the alert for this scheme and the cybermen cannot try it again. 

And the Cybermen self destructed? Casey asks. The Doctor replies, ‘goodness no,’ that would be murder. Even if the Cybermen have replaced their bodies with metal, they were still people. Besides, there was no way for K9 to get to the Bridge, they would have stopped him. 

Then what? K9 turns into a ghetto blaster and speaks with the voice of the Cyber-leader. 

The Doctor tells her that his robot dog is quite a ventriloquist, and can tap into the bases public address system. 

He didn’t need to blow them up, only make them think that.


	4. Big Giant Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor encounters an invasion of Kaiju from Outer Space...

The Doctor and Casey are enjoying a spot of fishing at a beach house at an isolated lake. The Tardis is sitting on the porch of the House. 

A giant blazing meteor streaks across the sky, crashing in the woods beyond. Casey looks at the Doctor. ‘You knew this was going to happen,’ she accuses. ‘I drive a time machine,’ he shrugs. Then he goes back to fishing.

Cut to a huge gouge in the countryside, a vast smoking crater. Approaching it in a pickup is a local sheriff, a tall skinny man. In the vehicle with him is the fat police detective, dressed in civilian clothes. The sheriff is welcoming his cousin out to the countryside, and telling him that except for a few grass fires, like up ahead, nothing ever happens out here. The detective talks about needing a quiet vacation.

Just then, a Giant monster, with rough, pebbly, red hide skin lumbers past roaring. The monster is fifty feet tall, with a barrel body, no neck, and short stumpy limbs sticking out of its sides. Seeing the pickup truck, it grabs it, shakes it, swings it around wildly, and then throws it away. The truck lands in the branches of a tree.

The Sheriff and his cousin just look at each other. They watch the roaring monster rumble away, frantically tearing up and flinging trees. Eventually, the Detective asks ‘You going to do something about that?’ ‘Eventually.’ They nod.

Another roaring monster comes into view - this one identical, except that its green. The two monsters rush up screaming in each other’s faces, and then they turn around and run in opposite directions, tearing up the countryside. A third monster shows up, this one blue, howling incessantly. They face each other... And then the three of them trundle off towards the small town. 

One of them accidentally knocks over the beach house that the Doctor and Casey are fishing from. The Doctor signs, throws away his fishing reel, and rolls up his sleeves.

The monsters reach the town. One of them waves around a set of train cars like a flail. Two others play a game of softball, using a mobile home as a bat, and an RV as a ball. The knock over buildings with abandon.

The Detective and his cousin the Sheriff make it down out of the tree and find the Doctor. The Detective is upset to see the Doctor once again, and accuses him of being at the bottom of things somehow.

The Doctor explains that they’re Grogniks, gigantic aliens, nearly indestructible, and of immense physical strength. Other races steer clear of them. But, they’re pretty reasonable, once you get their attention.

The Doctor throws back his head and roars. The three Grogniks stop motionless and turn towards the Doctor. Then they begin to advance. As the long shadows of the giants grow over the Doctor and Casey, she suggests that they retreat.

They roar at the Doctor. He roars back. An animated conversation ensues. The Grogniks wave their arms excitedly and run in circles. The Doctor explains - they were children, and they had taken their parents spaceship out and accidentally crashed it. They were so upset, they were throwing temper tantrums. It’s going to be all right. 

The Doctor roars some more. The Grogniks grow very still. They turn to each other, rumbling. The Doctor roars again. This time, the Grogniks grow hostile. The Doctor turns to his companions and tells them to run.

His big mistake? He told them he would just call their parents to come and get them. They weren’t quite ready for that. Fear of punishment is greater than the need to be rescued.

As the Doctor, Casey and the Sheriff and Detective run, cars, trees, pieces of houses and other small objects are flying past them. So what do we do now? Casey asks. 

No problem at all the Doctor replies. The Tardis goes flying past, another piece of debris thrown by the Grogniks. The Doctor lassos it with the chain from his watch. All he has to do is nip over to their crashed spaceship, send out the distress call to their parents, and they’ll nip right along to pick them up. Simple. All he needs Casey and the others to do is keep them occupied and entertained for a little while.

The Doctor retreats to the Tardis. Just as it vanishes, K9 steps out and advises he is ready to serve. An alien foot squashes it into the ground.

Quick cuts of the monsters pausing and clapping as the Sheriff and the Detective set off the fourth of July fireworks, cut short when one of the monsters eats the fireworks, and the others jump up and down with delight as the fireworks explode in its mouth. 

The Doctor is in the crashed alien ship, re-wiring a burnt control panel and pressing puttons. Suddenly, gravity reverses. Crossed a wire there!

Cut to whack a mole as the monsters try to smash the humans in an auto junk yard.

The Doctor is completely tangled up in wires in the space ship, his eyes look up as the ship announces ‘self destruct in ten seconds.’

Finally, there are clips of Casey teaching the monsters to play hopscotch, and using K9's Laser to play tic tac toe with the monsters on a cliff face. She uses the robot dog's laser to draw the lines and make X. The monsters punch holes in the cliff for the ‘O’.

Suddenly, the Grogniks become upset. Roaring, they smash the cliff and then advance on Casey and her companions. 

The Tardis appears and the Doctor steps out. Trouble? Casey says they’re upset at losing a game of Tic Tac Toe. The Doctor says that she should have let them win. Casey says that she was trying to do that, but it’s harder than it looks. The Doctor nods, Grogniks aren’t known for their brains. The monsters loom over them, fists raised hi. Casey begs the Doctor to do something. He replies ‘I did.’

Even vaster shadows loom over the monsters. The adult Grogniks, in all their immensity have arrived. They scoop up the squalling monsters, now revealed as infants, and march them off.

The Doctor hands Casey a slip of paper. What’s this? It’s the Grognik’s parents. They were very impressed with how you handled their children. They were wondering if you’d be available for regular babysitting.

The Army appears, belatedly. As the Detective and Sheriff begin to demand answers, the Doctor tells Casey it's time to leave. The two, together with K9, depart to the Tardis, which disappears.  
　


	5. Ancient Aliens!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor solves the mystery of the Pyramids, and Stonehenge, and Easter Island... And learns why most Aliens avoid earth!

Opening scene - a fleet of saucers approaches planet earth. 

Cut to scenes scenes of endless herds of bison roaming the American plain, in the arctic, wooly mammoths and rhinos look up at the shooting stars, elsewhere humans live in mud and thatch huts. The saucers descend on Egypt. The door to the lead saucer opens, and a trio of gray space aliens step out to greet the Pharaoh.

Next scene - the pyramids are being built. As the camera zooms in, diminutive gray space aliens are everywhere, pushing blocks, hauling them with ropes, wielding primitive stone tools as they struggle to build the pyramids. 

In fact, everywhere on earth, from Easter Island, to Mesopotamia to Central America, gray space aliens toil as unpaid slaves to build with the most rudimentary techniques available to them, as humans plan and direct.

The Tardis materializes in the midst of the struggling aliens. The Doctor steps out, takes a look around and says "That’s not how it’s supposed to happen." He and Casey are surrounded by men with spears.

SERIES MONTAGE

The Doctor and Casey are among the grays, struggling to push a giant pyramid block up a ramp. As they work, they are talking.

"So aliens really did build the pyramids?" Casey asks.

"It appears so," the Doctor replies.

"I didn’t think that they would be doing it like this."

"Well, it’s obvious when you think about it. Earth was very thinly populated in ancient times. There wasn’t much manpower around. Suddenly, millions of aliens show up who barely eat or drink.... That creates a gigantic pool of surplus labour. So of course, people will put them to work in all sorts of ways, serving them, building monuments to each other, and so forth.

"But why do the aliens allow it?"

"As nearly as I can sort out their language, they have no choice. They’re stuck here. Their ships are drained of power and need to recharge."

"But still..."

"They’re not very big or strong, you may have noticed. And unfortunately, this is an age where the mighty enslave the weak."

"But they are aliens, why are they working in such primitive ways."

"Well, really Casey, you’re a sophisticated 22nd century Earth girl. If I set you down in the middle ages, do you think you could build a vaulted archway or a windmill?"

"What?"

"Precisely. Most of these aliens are just regular people, telephone sanitizers, manicurists, waitresses, accountants, secretaries, etc. They don’t automatically have impressive engineering or architectural skills, any more than most people."

They pause to watch one group of aliens try to push a stone which has tipped into a pothole.

"And they’re not an especially bright species."

"How is that possible, Doctor?"

"Oh easily, they may not be smart, but they’ve had a very very long time to learn how to do things like build spaceships. You’d be surprised what can be accomplished with time."

Just then a burly Egyptian guard near Casey looms menacingly, looming over her, club raised to strike her. "No talking! More working!" he cries. But before he can strike, the Doctor’s watch on the end of its chain whips around the club, binding it tight. With a yank, the Doctor jerks it out of the guard’s hand.

"I think it’s time to leave," the Doctor says cheerfully, taking Casey’s arm. 

The two of them run off.

The Gray aliens look up, watching the duo run, and then return to work.

*********

Casey and the Doctor flee the Egyptian guards, ducking in doorways, running through tombs, hiding among statuary, posing as hieroglyphics. At one point, they are trapped before a chasm. But the Doctor uses his fob watch and chain to snare an overhead beam and swing across Indiana Jones style.

Eventually, hiding behind the back side of the sphinx, the Doctor and Casey lose the guards. They make their way back to where they left the Tardis, but it isn’t there. 

Cut to, the Tardis on its side, being used by the Pharaoh as a couch on his pleasure barge. As he is fanned by space aliens.

Cut to, the Doctor and Casey surrounded by men with spears, once again.

"I hope this doesn’t become a habit," says the Doctor.

**********

The Doctor and Casey are chained to a dungeon wall, next to an old man in robes. It turns out that he was the Pharaoh’s advisor. The Doctor and Casey are listening sympathetically to his story of how he came to be in the dungeon.

"My device could do the work of a dozen men," he is saying, "but the Pharaoh only laughed and asked why anyone would need such a device, since any man could have a dozen slaves to do the work directly..... And here I am."

"Just as I thought," replies the Doctor, "we must get rid of these aliens, before they bring all human progress to a halt."

"How are they doing that, Doctor?" Casey asks.

"With an endless supply of slaves to do all the work, there’s no motivation to invent or create or develop anything. Indeed, we can see that even now, the Egyptians are giving up their inventions, to rely entirely upon infinite slave labour. That’s not good for them. Human civilization is going in reverse."

"And not good for the slaves either," Casey asserts.

"Very true," the Doctor replies, "I suppose we need to save humanity once again, and these aliens too."

"How do we do that?"

"Very simple," the Doctor replies. "I have K9's whistle in my pocket, all I need to do is take it out and ...."

They look at each other, all three’s hands are chained high above their heads....

*************

The Pharaoh is knocked off his couch as the Tardis doors open and K9 flies off, cruising over the pyramids and zipping into the dungeon. He finds Casey with the whistle between her teeth, the Doctor contorted upside down, with one foot resting on the equally contorted rump of the advisor. All three are twisted awkwardly like a cirque du soleil performance.

"Master?"

K9's lasers cut the chains, and the three of them ride the overburdened robot dog back to the Tardis on the Pharaoh’s barge. K9 disables the Pharaoh’s guards, while the Doctor retrieves his watch. Casey remarks sarcastically that they should have done that from the start. The Doctor responds that then they wouldn’t have seen so much of Egypt.

The Doctor orders the Pharaoh to set the slaves free. The Pharaoh, clutching his Staff of Horus, refuses.

The Doctor then tells the gray alien slaves that they are free. The slaves refuse. It turns out, they’ve signed a contract. They must serve until their ships are fully recharged and they can continue on their way.

The Doctor asks for the contract. The aliens produce a scroll, which the doctor unfurls with a flick of his wrist.... The scroll unrolls, and unrolls, and unrolls reaching the length of the barge and beyond.

"I see that the Egyptians managed to invent lawyers," the Doctor comments.

"What are lawyers?" The aliens ask.

*************************

The Tardis materializes next at Stonehenge, then at Easter Island, then Mesopotamia. In each place, the aliens are busy struggling to erect tall stones or strange conical towers. Human overseers crack whips over their head.

The Doctor, inside the Tardis turns to Casey and the Pharaoh’s former advisor and says that there’s something wrong. The aliens ships should have recharged long ago. Why haven’t they? And why are the aliens still here?

The Doctor resolves to locate the aliens motherships and examine it.  
The mothership, it turns out is located in Ancient Egypt, and has been incorporated into the Pharaoh’s palace.

The Doctor talks his way and his friends way into the grounded spaceship/palace, and make their way past guards into the deep sections of the ship. They discover burly Egyptian blackmiths hammering away at the controls.

"Doctor, they’re trying to wreck the ship to make sure that the slaves will never leave!" Casey is outraged.

The Doctor is unperturbed. The alien ship’s systems are almost indestructible, and primitive savages can do no damage. After all, the ships were originally designed to be idiot proof... As K9 shoos away the glowering Egyptians, the Doctor examines the instrument panels.   
It turns out that the ships are fully recharged, and have been recharged for some time. But the signal has not gone out. 

The Doctor and his friends trace the machinery back to the signal generator, but the central antenna is gone. The Doctor notes that it would be a golden staff, about so long, with a power crystal at one end.

Just then, the Pharaoh comes storming in with his guards, and with his alien slaves, some of whom he has convinced to arm themselves with energy weapons. He demands that the intruders leave as these chambers are sacred to the gods. He points his staff of Horus at them, a long golden pole with a falcon’s head mounted on it.

The Doctor marches up to the Pharaoh, eyes flashing, and snatches the staff away. He smashes the head of the staff against the wall, and the Falcon’s head shatters, revealing the jewel beneath. The aliens gasp. The Doctor presents it to one of the aliens who replaces it in their ship. As the ship hums and powers up, aliens all over the world look up, drop their stone tools and begin to walk away.

"You are a very bad man," Casey tells the Pharaoh.

*********************

As the Pharaoh watches his palace fly away, he turns to his advisors and complains that the pyramids are half built. Who can they enslave to finish them? The advisors look at each other nervously.

*********************

The Tardis floats in space, as the Doctor and his companions watch the alien fleet swarm up into space and vanish among the stars.

The Doctor sighs that this experience has left its mark. Human progress probably been delayed by at least a thousand years, and all sorts of unhealthy ideas have taken root.

An alien face appears on the viewscreen, the alien leader thanking the Doctor for allowing them to continue on their journey. The Doctor asks them where they are going, what they are seeking. The alien replies that they are fleeing, fleeing to the ends of the universe.

The screen goes blank, and the ships continue to leave earth and vanish.  
The Doctor remarks that the incident has given Earth such a bad reputation among spacefaring races, that it will be thousands of years before any other aliens will dare to come near the place.

Ah well, the Doctor dismisses the thought. He must return the Pharaoh’s former chief advisor. Egypt isn’t too friendly right now. Where would he like to be dropped off? Mesopotamia? The renaissance? Chichen Itza?

Casey wonders out loud what the aliens were fleeing from.

*********************

Final shots of the incomplete monuments on earth, giant upright boulders, pillars or cones, all of which are partially textured in increasingly obvious ways.

The image zooms in on ancient Sumer, city of a thousand Ziggurats. Ziggurats are steep conical structures, many partially built, some with platforms of varying states upon them. In the center of a city are a handful of gigantic stone edifices, completed ziguratts. Above the sloping sides with their rows of rounded semi-spheres, are several stories of platforms and above those a dome. From the upper corners of the dome project two bumps or horns, and from the center an eye stalk. In front of the Ziguratt’s body there are two stylized projections - a gun and a claw. They are giant stone Daleks.

*********************

ROLL CREDITS　  
　


	6. Behind the scenes - Adapting a Live Action show to a Cartoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at Nelvana's struggles to adapt a much loved live action serial with 25 years of history to a Saturday morning program aimed at 13 year olds.

The demands and limitations of Saturday morning cartoon animation, Nelvana’s Doctor Who diverged considerably from the BBC series. The fundamental parameters that the series was operating on was quite different.

Briefly - Saturday morning cartoons were shorter than BBC episodes. 22 minutes compared to 25. This time was further shortened - the opening montage or theme song was intended to summarise the premise of the show in a cartoon, so that a child coming new would not be lost without backstory. This took anywhere from one to three minutes, closing credits might take a minute. Your 22 minute episode might actually be 18 minutes of story, or roughly two thirds of a BBC episode.

The American television half hour was 22 minutes because the remaining eight minutes of a half hour were allocated for commercials. The need to insert commercials at predictable intervals drove the story structure and framework. You didn’t want the viewing children to be confused, so plot points had to be clearly developed before a commercial break, and you wanted them to stay through the commercial rather than change channel, so the moments before a commercial had to be dramatically critical. The BBC didn’t have this constraint at all.

In fact, the BBC, with somewhat more time for storytelling and without the need to write around the artificial structure of commercials, had an added advantage. It’s Doctor who stories were serials, ranging from three to eight episodes. The result was complex layered narratives with multiple subplots, each peaking at a different point in the serial. There was room to develop not only the protagonists and antagonists but multiple supporting characters.

You weren’t going to get this in a Saturday afternoon cartoon format. The target demographic were kids between 8 and 14, with a lot of demand on their time. American television executives had very little faith in their ability or willingness to follow a sustained narrative over several episodes. There might be an occasional two part episode, but mostly, that was as far as they were willing to go.

On the other hand, repetition was a prized commodity. Repeating or continuing antagonists or supporting characters, often in relatively similar situations was desirable. So GI Joe regularly tussled with Cobra, He-Man duked it out Skeletor, and G-Force waged repetitive battles with Zoltar, and Inspector Gadget was always foiling the schemes of Doctor Claw. At times, an overall plot-arc could be hidden in the background and advance from one episode to the next, but the fact remained was that the episodes had to be stand alone.

The result was simplification everywhere. Simpler stories told much more broadly, there wasn’t going to be a lot of nuance because the kids weren’t going to understand nuance. There wasn’t time for complex characterizations for the main cast, much less supporting characters.

When it came to adapting Doctor Who as a Saturday afternoon cartoon, these factors were at work. The BBC live series was one with twenty five years of accumulated history and mythology. It simply wasn’t practical to fit that all in, no matter how much the purists might demand.

Take the name - the series insistence that despite the title, the character was simply ‘The Doctor’ didn’t hold up very well. In fact, for the first 18 years of the live action series, the character had been referred to as Doctor Who in the credits. The media constantly referred to the character as Doctor Who. Both the Cushing movies, the British comic strip and at least one of the Hartnell serials had the character as ‘Doctor Who.’ Like it or not, if the title was ‘Doctor Who’, that was going to be how children referred to the character, and what the character was going to be called. 

The backstory of the Doctor as an alien Time Lord from Gallifrey was also subject to revision. In the Cushing movies, the Doctor was a terrestrial human, although arguably it was never really addressed one way or the other. In the British comics, the issue had been glossed over through much of the Hartnell era. The Nelvana cartoon was essentially silent on the Doctor’s origins and nature. He was simply a strange man with a time machine that was a funny blue box.

The Time Lords would appear, but the mythology would be condensed. Only Two Time Lords, Magnar and Cellus would appear, but their role would be simply to give instructions and orders to a resentful Doctor, usually on his viewscreen. The ceremonial robes of the Time Lords would be kept, but the elaborate collars would be dropped as being too ‘satanic.’ Rather than clearly identified as an alien race with their own world, Gallifray, they would be presented as a beings charged with keeping order in universe, much like the Guardians in the Green Lantern comics. The Guardians of the Doctor Who universe, would be reduced to being a ‘title’ in the Order of Time Lords. Time criminals might appear, but they would not be identified explicitly as renegade Time Lords.

As for the Doctor himself, he would be presented as simply a ‘time policeman’ taking orders from the Guardians of the Time Lords, and travelling through time and space in a ‘Police Time Machine’ called Tardis for convenience, which now meant ‘Time and Reality Detention/Arrest Service.’ The backstory of a broken chameleon circuit, or being stuck imitating an obsolete telecommunications installation from another country was just out the window.

There would be some ambiguity. The Doctor was not going to be just a ‘time policeman’, but a disgraced one. Earth was not just his assignment, it was his punishment, something alluded to occasionally, and good for flashes of resentment from the character, which the more sophisticated children might pick up on, but which could be happily overlooked without causing any confusion by the casual watchers.

The Doctor’s history would be essentially dispensed. That he’d fled Gallifrey, that he had stolen his Tardis, that he had a granddaughter, had gone through prior regenerations, all that was unnecessary and superfluous to cartoon. The Doctor might meet an older/younger version of himself, but it would not be a recognizable character from the live series. At best, there might be a throwaway allusion or reference to some adventures of the BBC series. But on the other hand, this Doctor might not have previously met either the Cybermen or Daleks.

There would not be any explanation for K-9, which would simply be a standard issue ‘Time Police’ robot dog. 

Nor would there be any explanation for Casey Jones travelling with the Doctor. If the series extended past thirteen episodes, that might be addressed. At the same time, there’d be no specific allusions to prior companions. By the same token, if the series extended, Casey might be replaced by another companion, with no explanation for the departure or arrival committed to.

As for supporting characters, in Earthbound stories set in the present, the fat detective and the skinny sheriff would either alternate or appear together. Apart from that, a supporting character might be created and used for a single science fiction episode, though there was some hope to re-use a character's animation cycles.

Nelvana was prepared to risk one or two, two part stories. But everthing else would be self contained single episodes, capable of being shown in any order, with the possibility of continuing characters, but no iron continuity.


	7. Designing the New Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What to do? Use an existing Doctor? Create a new one? What should the Doctor look like?

In adapting Doctor Who as a cartoon, Nelvana's first challenge was to define what visual elements from Doctor Who were going to be used.

Doctor himself was a challenge. By the time of the Nelvana cartoon, there had been seven, perhaps eight (including Cushing) to draw from, of every appearance and brand of eccentricity. Tom Baker was the most famous, of course, due to his length of tenure and PBS showings, but there had been at least two after him.

It was unlikely that Baker, or any of the others were actually going to be used. An actor's face, even in caricature, is a property, and their likenesses cannot be used, except by permission and usually by paying a license fee. Given that all of these Actors were resident in England, some were dead, some were a bit ... difficult to deal with, that seemed an unnecessary complication. 

Further, using the image might involve some suggestion that the owner of the face provide the voice, and further contracts and complications. If there was some likelihood that this could be done cheaply and easily, it's possible that Nelvana would have gone down this route. But given that it's transcontinental and trans-national, it wasn't likely to be cheap or easy.

The best option for Nelvana was to go for a completely new image of the Doctor, and use a local voice actor that they had some working relationship with. That would maximize their freedom. The only requirements for the new Doctor would be that he was British and eccentric in a charming way. None of Ted Bastien's concept drawings for the Doctor involved any clear likeness to any existing Doctor. 

There were several design options, ranging from old men to young, from an extremely English 'short coated, capped' cricketeer to the more mysterious but comic trenchcoat figure, to younger or more 'heroic' figures, based on Harold Ramis or Jeff Goldbloom.

We can actually dissect the sources of inspiration - there are the Doctors of course, particularly Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee known best from PBS and by far the most influential doctors in and of themselves. But by this time, through PBS almost all the Doctors would have had some exposure. But they wouldn't have had a lot of exposure to the targeted children's demographic in America. Some of those kids might be watching PBS and be Tom Baker fans, but mostly, the were tied into American media.

But there were also local influences - the reality is that the choices and concepts of a Doctor Who Cartoon were always going to be more strongly influenced by the culture of American cartoons in the 80's than by the series. Like it or not, He Man or Ghostbusters or their ilk were going to be more influential than Tom Baker. Doc Brown from Back to the Future - the model for the elderly eccentric, inventor, time traveller in his own right. The other was Egon from Ghostbusters, the younger more active version of the science hero. As much as the British Doctors, these two examples provided the poles, the two extreme visions that Nelvana had to choose between.

There wasn't a lot of 'clever old men' in Saturday morning cartoons at this time. For the target demographic, it was 'Boys adventure' - He Man, GI Joe, Transformers, etc. An Old Man was a father surrogate, which definitely wouldn't be the Doctor. A quirky eccentric 'non-fatherly' old man as a hero would be hard for the 8 to 14 year old boys who were going to be the audience to engage with. 

And if you went with the old guy, you'd have to have a young person to do the actual heroic stuff - Doc Brown had his Marty McFly. This had been true for the Doctor himself, Hartell had had Ian, and Troughton had had Jamie. Even as recently as the Tom Baker era, Harry Sullivan had been brought in as a companion before they'd chosen Baker, because they weren't sure what Doctor they were going to get and they thought they might need a young strong man to do the action sequences.

So the older versions were out. The demands of the series mechanics pushed them towards the younger, robust version.

As to the visual elements - the trenchcoat and scaff were clearly in. Lots of room for pockets in the trenchoat. We could see the Doctor

The fob watch was a very handy symbol of time. Time references could be made constantly through it. It would have probably taken the place of the sonic screwdriver as a versatile tool - communicator, hypnosis tool, badge, flashlight or searchlight, speaker, recorder, handheld computer, tardis control, etc. 

The watch chain would have allowed it to be used like Indiana Jones whip, or a cowboy's lasso, the length of fine chain could be as long as it needed to be. It was certainly handier and less bulky than Egon's backpack.

However, that doesn't mean that the elderly Doctor concept was set aside. The Doctor was a time traveller after all, and in the British series, he'd met himself several times, in fact, he'd met several versions of himself more than once. So the older Doctor was tucked away, possibly to make a guest appearance late in the series.


	8. Episode 5:   The Cyberman Meltdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Cybermen are back, and this time, they're out to win! They take control of the world's nuclear reactors, and then they come after the Doctor.

Opening shot of the exterior of a nuclear power plant with the distinctive cooling towers. The image opens up to a group of Cybermen. There are several different designs, apart from the skeletal version, including a heavy duty truck like model, one with fused legs ending in caterpillar treads, another with arms replaced by exotic tools and torches, and another on metallic spider legs. The obvious leader is a tall Cyberman whose head is a swollen glass dome with an exposed brain.

The Cyber-leader explains that so far, their plans to convert Earth have come to nothing because of the interference of Doctor Who. Their latest plan will not fail, however. They will use Earth’s own vulnerability against it - there are nuclear power plants all over the world. Radiation is harmless to Cybermen, but dangerous to organic beings. The Cybermen will attack the world’s nuclear plants causing them to melt down. As the radiation spreads, humanity will have no choice but to upgrade.

One of the Cybermen asks, what of the Doctor?

The Cyber-Leader ominously replies that plans are already under way to take care of the Doctor and prevent his interference. 

Camera pulls back to show that the Cyberman ship is in space, orbiting the Earth.

ROLL OPENING

The Sheriff is visiting his cousin the Detective in the big city and the two of them are walking along. The Detective is talking about the greatest burrito place on Earth. They turn a corner and and suddenly come face to face with a trio of Cybermen, classic metal skeleton types.

The Cybermen demand the lawmen give them Doctor Who. The Sheriff pulls his gun and shoots, but the bullets bounce off. The Cybermen repeat their demands. The Lawmen flee. There is a chase scene, as the Cybermen tear through walls, smash down doors, overturn vans and rip doors off of cars, continually demanding Doctor Who.

Finally, the Lawmen are trapped up against a brick wall, the trio of Cybermen closing in. Once again, they demand the Doctor.

From behind them, the Doctor announces that he is here. As the Cybermen turn to advance on the Doctor, he and Casey strike a heroic pose. He pulls out his fob watch and swings it on the end of the chain. The watch chain lengthens as it swings, wrapping around the Cybermen like a bolo. The Doctor pulls the chain and the cybermen are drawn into a tight knot, bound together by the golden chain. The fob watch dangles against a Cyberman’s chest.

The Doctor walks up casually. ‘Gentlemen,’ he announces, popping the watch open, ‘your time is up.’ He presses a stud on the watch, and electrical currents surge through frying the Cybermen.

‘That takes care of that,’ the Doctor says, rubbing his hands. He explains that they’re not killed, only knocked out. He doesn’t believe in killing. The Cybermen aren’t fundamentally bad, just misguided. The big question is why, they were looking for him. There are easier ways to get his attention, and after all, he can travel anywhere and any time with his Tardis.

Off in the distance, Casey screams and points. The scene cuts to a group of the deviant Cybermen binding the Tardis in a metal casing, and loading it onto a shuttlecraft. The doors open and K9 breaks free, calling out, and flying towards the Doctor. He is struck by a blue beam from one of the Cybermen and falls to the ground. Casey rushes to pick him up. K9's sensors flicker.

The Doctor rushes forward raising swinging his fob watch on its chain. But suddenly, the Fob Watch is caught in the metal hand of one of the trio of Cybermen behind them. They have gotten to their feet, apparently unaffected. It crushes the watch in its hand and drops it. The Doctor, powerless faces the trio of Cybermen. He demands to know what they want from him.

"Nothing." The Cybermen walk past him. He can no longer interfere with their plans. Therefore he is no longer relevant. The shuttle flies off, as the Cybermen leave, ignoring him.

Casey asks what is going on. Grimly, the Doctor replies that it might be the end of the world.

*******************

Back to establishing shot of the nuclear plant. A delivery truck pulls up at a checkpoint. Cybermen burst from the truck, overturning vehicles and smashing everything in sight. Ignoring a hail of gunfire, they march on the nuclear plant, while civilians flee in all directions.

The image pulls back to the Doctor, Casey and the Lawmen watching on a bank of television screens. This is the eleventh nuclear plant the Cybermen have attacked, the Detective states. Casey is holding the damaged K9 in her arms, a quiet voice announces repairs are under way. Casey observes that once they enter the nuclear plant, they don’t do anything. 

The Sheriff says that they are trapping themselves, they can’t escape. The Detective notes that the Cybermen are almost unstoppable, they can walk through machine gun fire like it was a spring shower, he doesn’t understand what they are doing.

The Doctor tells them that they are waiting until everything is in position. They are taking over all the world’s nuclear plants. When they control them all, they will cause them to melt down simultaneously flooding the world with radiation and forcing every human to convert to cyberman or die.

The Sheriff says that they must take the nuclear plants back, and put heavy guards, time to call out the army. The Doctor replies that it will not do any good. The only way to stop the Cybermen is to strike their central control.

Where is that, Casey asks? The Doctor looks up.

**********************

Up in space, immense Cyberman ship hangs, shuttles full of cybermen leaving for earth. Inside the Cyber-Leader is addressing the assembled Cybermen. Thirty per cent of Earth’s nuclear plants are under their control, and despite increasing resistance, more are falling all the time. Soon they will be in a position to flood the earth with Radiation. The Doctor cannot stop them.

Just then a giant viewscreen turns on. Doctor Who’s face appears. The Doctor orders them to cease their plans immediately and depart Earth. This is his final warning. The Cybermen tell the Doctor that without his Tardis he is helpless. The Doctor warns that he is not without resources. The Cyber-Leader dismisses his threats as hollow, and tells him that afterwards, when humanity has converted to Cybermen, they will thank us. He turns off the viewscreen.

Back on Earth, Casey looks out from behind a video camera and asks that Doctor if he got that. The Doctor pulls out his watch, clearly bent and mangled, but still functioning somewhat, and checks it. Triangulated, the Doctor says. He knows where they are now, and how to access their communication codes.

The Doctor then asks K9 whether he was able to download the ship’s schematics while the channel was open. K9 confirms. He advises the Doctor that 40% of self repairs are completed.

The Doctor rubs his hands together happily. All they have to do now is get to the Cyberman ship in orbit, access their central computer banks, initiate shutdown, and the problem is solved.

The Detective asks how they are supposed to get into Orbit? Steal a rocket? Much too obvious, the Doctor replies, they will spot that coming. Does anyone have a car or something? The Sheriff tells them he has an old yellow jalopy. When he sees it, the Doctor announces that it is perfect. He pulls out his bent and broken watch, presses a few studs. It turns into various hand tools, all of them bent or distorted, until settling onto the form of a twisted wrench. Perfect, he announces. Time to get to work, after all, they only have three hours to the end of the world.

**********************

A rocket rises into the sky, heading towards the Cyberman Spaceship. The Cybermen watch it on their view screens. The Doctor’s face appears on the screens, telling them it is their last chance to surrender. 

The Cyber-Leader mocks the Doctor for trying to reach them in such a pitiful vehicle. It orders the lasers to be armed. The Doctor protests. The Cyber-Leader says ‘Goodbye Doctor Who.’ As the Doctor cries out to wait, that they must listen, a laser beam blows up the rocket.

One of the Cybermen turns to the other and says he is sorry that the Doctor has been killed. He could have been made into a good Cyberman instead.

***************************

 

Image of a heavily modified yellow jalopy, Bessie, flying along the length of the immense Cybermen spaceship, passing under the vanes. The vehicle is packed - The Doctor, Casey, K9 and the two Lawmen are wedged into a cramped space. K9 has manifested a screen for the Doctor to talk to the Cyber-Leader which goes blank.

That was disappointing, the Doctor muses. He had hoped they would listen to reason. But at least the decoy worked. 

Cybermen scanners have still not detected us, K9 reports, internal repairs 55% completed. Docking imminent.

The Detectives asks what they are supposed to do once they have gotten into the ship. Distract them, the Doctor replies.

Bessie flies in through the airlock, but instead of landing, simply flies down corridors bowling over Cybermen like tenpins. They drive through a Cyberman fabrication center, scattering components and shells. A Cyberman helmet lands in the lap of the sheriff. The sheriff and detective look at each other.

************

The Cybermen finally halt Bessie, converging on the car, they find it empty. Meanwhile, some very ungainly looking Cybermen, the Doctor and his companions, wearing bits and pieces of Cyberman armour and headpieces, sneak off to cause trouble.

Shots of the Detective and Sheriff pulling pranks on Cybermen, directing them down empty elevator shafts, tricking them out of airlocks. Plugging in and unplugging wires.

Cut to the Cyber-Leader, receiving one error message after another, expressing increasing frustration. The malfunctions must stop, it announces. They are only ten minutes from commencing worldwide melt down of earth’s nuclear plants. At that moment, the countdown clock freezes, and an error message appears. What now? The Cyber-Leader complains. 

Do you have a moment, the Doctor asks, removing a Cyber helmet. Suddenly, he is surrounded by Cybermen of all sorts, most pointing weapons at him. The Doctor is unperturbed. He pulls out his watch, still bent, and checks it. ‘Last chance,’ he says, ‘and this time I mean it. Call it off.’

The Cyber-Leader dismisses his demand. The countdown cannot be halted, the Cyber-Leader states. Earth will be converted, it is more than inevitable, it is good. The Doctor is in their power, he is helpless, and he will be witness to Earth’s transformation.

Ah, but the Doctor admits he’s been doing a little rewiring while he’s been on the ship. The countdown clock is now tied into the Cybermen’s auto-destruct. When it reaches zero, Earth’s nuclear reactors will not melt down. Instead, every Cyberman in the solar system will terminate.

The Cyber-Leader tells the Doctor he is bluffing. The Doctor shrugs, pulls out his watch, he pushes a stud. The error message disappears and the clock begins counting down. He pushes another stud, and the countdown doubles.

The Cyber-Leader accuses the Doctor of bluffing, but with much less certainty. The other Cybermen are looking at each other. How could the Doctor get into their computer systems.

The Doctor presses another stud. K9 appears on the viewscreen, numerous cables are connecting K9 into the Cybermen’s computer banks. Ready? The Doctor asks. Ready, K9 replies.

Your time, the Doctor announces, is up. He is about to close the watch, when the Cyber-Leader cries out ‘Wait.’ They surrender. They will shut down and leave Earth forever.

*******************

The Tardis materializes back on Earth. The Doctor, Casey, a fully operational K9 and the two lawmen step out. There is a Cyberman waiting for them. Behind it, Cybermen are marching into the last of their shuttles. It tells the Doctor that the Agreement will be abided, the Cybermen are leaving, it is the last. 

The Cyberman asks the Doctor why he fought them, when they only wanted to improve the human race and make it better. The Doctor replies that they went about it wrong. They tried to trick people or force people or bribe them. They never offered it as an honest choice, but always tried to take people’s choice away, it was about freedom.

The Cyberman tells the Doctor that freedom does not compute. The Doctor says that was always their problem.

The Cyberman wishes the Doctor good luck for the future. Earth needed what the Cybermen could give humanity. Without them, how will they face the Daleks. It walks away.

As they watch it depart on its shuttle, the Detective asks the Doctor how he was able to rewire the Cyberman’s self destruct so quickly. 

The Doctor says he couldn’t. That’s much too well protected. Instead, he just got K9 to patch into the communications systems. He bluffed. Machines don’t understand bluffs. They congratulate the Doctor.

The Sheriff asks a final question - ‘What are Daleks?’

 

********************

Production notes: Nelvana's third cyberman story had a tortured production history. It was originally scheduled to the third episode in the series. However, concerns over possible over-use of the Cybermen raised concerns. It was decided to move the story further back in the series, and run a couple of more light hearted stand alone episodes.

Following this, the episode was originally conceived as a two parter. A number of variant cybermen were drawn for possible toy applications, including the Cyber-Leader, the 'tread' Cyberman, the 'heavy duty' Cyberman, etc. At the last minute, in response to concerns from CBS which was carrying the cartoon, Nelvana backed away from the concept and recut it as a single episode, leading to an occasionally disjointed narrative.

No copies of the two part version survive, however, an extra length version of the episode was included with the two earlier Cyberman episodes on a 2006 VHS release titled 'Doctor Who versus the Cybermen'


	9. Behind the Scenes - Rethinking K9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every cartoon needs a child friendly character. K9 fits the bill...

For the prospective series, K9 offered both problems and opportunities to Nelvana.

The problems came with the BBC's peculiar ownership structure with regards to Doctor Who. In short, the BBC owned the Doctor, the Tardis, and a handful of basic elements for the series, time travel, regenerations, etc.

But outside writers were writing for the series, and they owned their characters and creations. Thus, the rights to the Daleks were held by Terry Nation. Kit Pedlar owned the Cybermen. Malcom Hulke had the rights to the Silurians and Sea Devils, while Robert Holmes held the Sontarans, and so forth... The Great Intelligence and the Yeti, the Master, the Draconians, the Rani, were all privately held. And so was K9.

So if Nelvana wanted to use any of these, it couldn't just pick them up and use them. Rather, they'd have to go back to the rights holders in England and make another deal with them. In a sense, Nelvana having bought rights to Doctor Who would have to go out and buy them again... and again... and again.... That wasn't appealing. And definitely not appealing for a one shot episode appearance.

But K9 created by Bob Baker and Dave Martin was special.

The thing with K9 was that K9 was child friendly. In the television series, with Tom Baker, it had been the children's favourite part of the show, the amiable little robot dog with amazing powers, a childlike figure in itself, and a projection of children's fantasies and appeal.

In the cartoon world, there were a lot of characters filling an almost identical role. For instance, Slimer the ghost mascot in Ghostbusters, Orko the tiny floating wizard in He Man, Snarf in the Thundercats, Scrappy Doo in Scooby Doo and so forth. 

K9 fit the mold very well, he could be used for comic relief, an identification figure for younger children and an effective plot device.

Animation offered k9 opportunities that he'd never had. As live action, K9 was an immobile and difficult to work prop, with a limited ability to travel or be dragged over level ground, waggle its head and rotate its ears. The rest of it was voice work, and Tom Baker and Lalla Ward acting up a storm around it.

But as a cartoon? There were no restrictions at all. K9 could come into full bloom as a fully expressive character. No animatronics, no wiring, no wrestling with the prop - K9 was as live or lively as they could make him.

There was almost no question that K9 was going to appear in the series. If Nelvana had to buy the rights separately, they would. This is apparent in the proof of concept sketches. K9 appears no less than three times, which shows the conceptual significance of a character of this sort to a children's animation.

There's the rather clever production sketch up top, of course, which depicts k9 as a 'morphing' robot - sometimes with legs, sometimes without, a computer screen for a head, the ability to transform or reshape itself into a computer. 

The notion of K9 being able to fold up and masquerade as a doctor's bag is actually quite clever. This was occasionally incorporated into the show, as would a more 'morphy' k9 capable of changing its shape or extruding a variety of tools and instruments/

One comment - although animation would allow K9 to be and do things that he could never manage in live action, it wasn't an unlimited opportunity. There was a limit to the resolution of colour television in the 80's, hi-definition was a long way away. 

And when you were committing to 40,000 drawings for a half hour cartoon... you didn't want to make things too complicated and stylized. A lot of fine detail, rivets, seams, cogs and sprockets, that was fine for a concept drawing. Not much fun for animation, and even if you bothered to make the effort, it wouldn't actually give you much on broadcast. So any cartoon K9 was likely to be much more stylized and simplified than the concept drawing


	10. Meanwhile at the BBC

In 1984, Michael Grade became Controller of BBC1. Prior to that he had worked with London Weekend Television and Tandem Productions television in the United States. He was one of the first outsiders recruited to a high post within the BBC.

Grade was, to put it simply, not a fan of British Science fiction. He had seen Star Wars, Star Trek, Close Encounters of the 4th Kind, Alien and Terminator. Compared to that, he’d seen Peter Davison’s ‘Warriors of the Deep’ featuring a tosh pantomime monster dragging itself across a studio floor. He was, especially not a fan of Doctor who.

His dislike for the series increased exponentially with Colin Baker. He disliked Baker’s costume and disliked Baker’s theatrical acting style. Even worse, during this period, Baker was going through a difficult divorce from his then wife Liza Goddard, who was living with Michael Grade during the period of estrangement. There was no question as to Grade’s sympathy or affection for Goddard and his determination that Baker not work for the BBC.

In February, 1985, the decision was made to cancel the series, to free up funding for Eastenders. Immediately, there was a public outcry. Grade was forced to backpeddle and announced that instead of cancellation, the serieswould be put on hiatus, following the completion of the season on March 30, 1985. It didn't help him. On March 2, 1985, the Daily Star printed an article about the hiatus of Doctor Who, beginning a ‘Save Dr Who’ campaign. A flurry of letters were written to the newspapers and the BBC.

Meanwhile, Ian Levine, a long time fan and record producer, organized a ‘Doctor in Distress’ style record - along the lines of ‘Band-Aid’. Recorded on March 8, it was released March 15, 1985, and was absolutely terrible. 

Under fire, Grade had no choice but to retreat, instead of carefully turning the hiatus into a termination in eighteen months, either throughout right execution or further postponements. Doctor Who would be allowed to continue, for a few years at least. But it's season would be cut in half, leaving it with only fourteen half hour episodes. The budget would go down, in absolute or comparative terms, and the show would be sabotaged by putting it in the second half hour of Buck Rogers, or up against the nation's most popular soap opera.

By 1989, after three years of limping along under Sylvester McCoy, the show was put on hiatus, this time without a definite return date. Although it would never be admitted by the BBC, Doctor Who was cancelled. 

Under pressure and hoping to quell the outrage and fan agitation, BBC sought to placate fans by approving BBC Enterprises plans to license an animated adaptation of the series. The animated series could be run on the BBC during the hiatus period.

Fans were not impressed. Most British fans saw the move as another backdoor effort to kill the series, this time by substituting a tosh cartoon. A number of paranoid theories circulated in British fandom, the most prominent of which was that the animated series would be scheduled to minimize ratings, and that these continually diminished ratings would be applied to decisions regarding the live action program.

No less than Ian Levine denounced the cartoon. Colin Baker publicly wondered why a cartoon series did not employ him, or any other previous Doctor. British fandom reacted to the animated series with fascinated loathing. Almost any decision made by Nelvana was accompanied by screaming denunciations.

By early 1986, when the series began airing in Canada and the United States British fans were actually circulating petitions against the airing of the Cartoon on the BBC. The animated series had become known as Michael Grade’s Ant-Who.

Ultimately, the series was not aired in England, although quixotically, bootleg episodes from America circulated through fandom, usually to hysterical denunciation.

******************

If the senior management at the BBC hated Doctor Who in the late eighties, that wasn't an opinion shared throughout the organization, or its subsidiaries.

In 1979, BBC Enterprises was established as a commercial subsidiary to BBC. The mandate of BBC Enterprises expanded to include home video, audio recordings in the form of records and cassettes, films and merchandising, publications and international sales and distribution. By April 1, 1986, all commercial activities by BBC entities had been subsumed under BBC Enterprises.

By far the most profitable area of BBC Enterprises was Doctor Who. Between international sales and the licensing of books and merchandise, BBC Enterprises was grossing as much from Doctor Who as the series was costing to produce.

Michael Grade's antipathy to the show, and his decision to engineer its termination, early in 1985, starting with a hiatus, produced something close to panic in BBC Enterprises. He might not like the show, but to BBC Enterprises, it was their golden goose he was proposing to kill.

But there wasn't much they could do about it. BBC Enterprises was technically an independent operation and Grade had little say over it. But at the same time, it had no production facilities, no production experience or ability. They couldn't save Doctor Who themselves.

At best, they needed to figure out a way to maximize its revenue before the series was gone for good.

What BBC Enterprises was good at, however, was licensing. They licensed television shows for international distribution, they licensed BBC intellectual properties for toys, mementos, books and publications. 

So.... theoretically, if a foreign company, somewhere abroad, wanted to produce a version of Doctor Who.... they could license that.

And in fact, there had been many American television programs that had been successful or unsuccessful remakes of British Programs. But Doctor Who was different. Doctor Who was a live, very well established program. A 'core' program from the BBC. Licensing a version of Doctor Who to another country, while the series was being produced at home.... that wasn't going to happen. It was a bad, bad, bad idea.

But Doctor Who as a series on potentially indefinite hiatus, riding the edge of termination... that offered possibilities.

There was still no option of a live action series of course. Nothing too close to the original. But an animated series? Perhaps something developed for the burgeoning American Saturday morning and afternoon audience? Something that could be used to boost licensing and merchandising revenue through toy sales?

Doctor Who toys and merchandising had been extremely popular in Britain, and there were numerous toy lines based around or inspired by the series. The bottom line was that there was a lot of established product available. Designs were completed, packaging was completed, even production lines. All of the R&D and development costs had already been paid. Essentially, everything was sitting on the shelf in England, waiting to be picked up by America, by American parent companies, affiliates or licensors. Even a tiny fraction of the American market would be lucrative.

All BBC Enterprises needed, all the toy-makers and sellers needed, was a company that could produce an acceptable half hour cartoon series for the children's market....

And Nelvana stepped forth...


	11. Episode Six:   Two Doctors for Big Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Gargon invasion fleet is bearing down on Earth. Not even the Doctor can stop them. But what about two Doctors?

A fleet of spaceships, clearly warships, bristling with guns and missile banks are passing through an asteroid belt. Inside the fleet, we see the admiral, a gross reptilian creature, a Gargon, giving his orders. Earth appears on the viewscreen. The aliens tell each other that Earth is a primitive planet and will pose no challenge. They tell each other that nothing can stop them now.

As the spaceships pass by, the image zooms in on a tiny asteroid. On the asteroid, the camera zooms further in, revealing a blue police box, and a figure standing in front of it. The Doctor stands, silently watching the immense warships go past. He looks very grim.

ROLL OPENING

 

The Tardis appears on Earth, its doors opening, and Casey goes inside. Inside the control room, a wizened old man looks up and smiles, beckoning her to join him. Confused, Casey demands to know who the stranger is and how he knows her. He laughs and tells her that he is the Doctor. She responds that he doesn’t look like Doctor Who at all, and he is so much older. The Doctor laughs and says he is much younger.

Casey looks suspicious and demands to know if this is some kind of time travel thing. The ‘old man’ Doctor laughs, tells her it is exactly that, and that he needs her help to save the world from an alien invasion.   
Another one? Casey asks. The Doctor nods. Casey tells the old man that he looks nothing like the Doctor, how does she know he really is the Doctor. Because, he responds, he knows her. He whispers something in her ear. Her eyes grow wide, and she says he really is the Doctor.

That out of the way, the Doctor proceeds to explain the situation to her. An image appears on his screen. The race is the Gargans. Good singing voices, fond of gardening, but their cuisine leaves something to be desired. Fairly unsocial, and normally, they’d leave well enough alone. Unfortunately, their sun is going to go Nova in about five hundred years. So they need to move.

More unfortunately, the Doctor explains, the closest habitable planet for them is Earth, which as we know, is already inhabited. So they’re sending two invasion fleets. The immediate one, which is intended to sweep earth clean. The big settlement fleet will be in 500 years, where the rest of their population will relocate. The Doctor explains that he has stopped the invasion five hundred years in the future, and now he has travelled back in time, to help his older self stop the current invasion.

Casey asks how he will stop an alien invasion. The old Doctor says that’s a very good question. In these situations, the options are brute force, communication, or confusion. The Doctor leads her to the door of the Tardis. In this case, the Doctor says, confusion is the best option. He throws open the doors, leading Casey onto the bridge of the Alien flagship, where a terrifying number of very big guns are pointed at them.

"Who are you, and why are you here?" The alien commander demands.

"Me? I’m nobody. Pay no attention to me. But this is Casey Jones," the Doctor announces, "Ambassador from Earth. She is here to surrender!"

The aliens briefly look around at each other. Then they let out a rousing cheer, shaking their weapons, patting each other on the back, and grinning broadly. Casey looks very confused. The Doctor is looking very pleased, as he sneaks out a door.

 

****************

The regular Doctor’s Tardis materializes on another part of the alien flagship. The door opens slightly, the Doctor peaks out. The route is clear. The Doctor tiptoes out. Suddenly the lights go on, music blares and confetti fills the air. The Doctor finds himself in the middle of a Victory party, as the alien invaders all celebrate Earth’s surrender. A soldier’s helmet is placed on his head, and a cup of some unmentionable liquid is thrust into his hands. Several aliens vie to have their picture taken with him. He ends up in a Conga Line. As the Conga line goes one way, he notices the old Doctor, in a Conga line going the other way. The old Doctor winks.

Eventually, the Doctor and K9 sneak away to a less busy part of the ship, the computer and sensor banks. There’s a technician on duty. The Doctor gives it his cup of unmentionable liquid, telling the alien that the drink’s been sent down to him from the party. The technician accepts it gratefully, wishing that he could be up at the victory party. But there’s a few bugs in the fire controls. The Doctor says that as it turns out, he knows a little about programming, pressing a few buttons, he solves the problem.

The Technician is incredibly grateful. He apologizes about the coming extermination of the human race, particularly since they’re being so good about surrendering at all. He hopes perhaps some of humanity can be saved, slaves or pets or museum pieces or something. The Doctor shrugs. 

The Technician wishes he could get up to the party. The Doctor volunteers to stick around and watch over the place. The Technician is greatful. The Doctor asks for a list of things he shouldn’t touch, just to be on the safe side.... The Technician points out all the things the Doctor shouldn’t touch... Navigation, computer networks, fire control, self destruct, armaments, life support... And then parts happily.

The Doctor rolls up his sleeves, nods to K9, who has managed to acquire a soldiers helmet and is draped with party streamers, and says its time to get to work.

*****************

Meanwhile, Casey is muddling her way through the peace negotiations. Surrender has complicated things, they tell her. Originally the plan was to exterminate all the humans in a glorious invasion campaign...  
But now that they’ve surrendered, they’re property that comes along with the planet. So now they’re not sure what to do. Maybe the humans could all just leave and go somewhere? They could be tenants. Maybe set up some reservations or something? 

But, the old Doctor returns and points out, the humans have no ships. Perhaps the humans could have the battlefleet after the Aliens take over the Earth? After all, they won’t be needing it. They could buy the whole thing, for a very good price. What are used battle fleets going for these days. The aliens start arguing about the price, claiming that the battle fleet is like new, the guns haven’t even been fired. Some fierce haggling goes on...

One of the aliens stops and goes "Wait a second!"

*****************

The regular Doctor pulls himself out from under a computer bank, and wipes a smear of grease off his forehead. K9 tells him that the modifications are complete. One down, the Doctor says, another 99 to go.  
　

****************

Assisting Casey, the old Doctor is pointing out the deserts, the impassible mountains, the steaming impenetrable jungles, the ice fields, the seas and oceans. The aliens are daunted. Isn’t there anywhere nice on Earth?  
Sure, the old Doctor says, ‘right here.’ The Admiral of the fleet immediately claims it as personal property. Several of the other aliens protest. They begin to argue among themselves as to who gets what part of Earth, with several alien commanders protesting over being assigned to the unpleasant areas of the planet.

***************

The regular Doctor is running down a corridor, chased by a horde of aliens. He passes by the old Doctor, and stops. The old Doctor passes him a soldering iron. The regular Doctor grabs it and continues running. Meanwhile, the old Doctor directs the horde down the wrong corridor.

*************

The old Doctor is demonstrating how to make an ice cream sundae for the fascinated aliens, while revealing that Ice Cream Sundaes are found only on one place of Earth. An alien immediately claims it, and a fight breaks out.

Casey offers to throw in the Moon, and four cases of wombats, if they’ll stop fighting, but the battles only increase in intensity as the aliens dissolve into chaos. The ships all stop moving in space, turning their guns on each other.

The old Doctor tells Casey its time to leave. He has to travel to the future and stop the next alien invasion 500 years from now.

Casey has to duck to avoid a large heavy object, thrown as the aliens riot. When she looks up, the old Doctor and his Tardis are gone. An angry alien comes at her with an axe. Casey cowers. But a gold watch at the end of a long chain wraps around the axe, pulling it from the creatures hands.

"Casey?" A voice asks. It’s the regular Doctor, looking astonished. "What are you doing here?"

***************

Inside the Tardis, the regular Doctor, Casey and K9 are watching the viewscreen.

On the viewscreen, the Gargon admiral is calling his crew to battle stations. Addressing the other ships, he announces that Earth is just not big enough for all of them. He demands the other ships surrender or be destroyed.... it’s all the same to him.

The other warships are all targeting each other or the flagship. On the screen, the image dissolves to dozens of angry Gargons threatening each other. Images of yelling angry Gargons proliferate.

Suddenly, the flagships guns fire.... Into an asteroid. They are joined by all the other warships, firing into the same asteroid.

Confusion reigns, as the Gargons demand that their gunners fire on each other. But despite that, all of the armaments are poured ceaselessly onto the large asteroid. Finally, the barrages come to an end.

The Doctor reveals that he spent the day, changing their armaments computer systems, so that all fire would be directed against a harmless asteroid, rather than Earth. 

Earth? Casey asks. But wasn’t it his plan all along to get the aliens to fight among each other? ‘No, that was my plan,’ the older Doctor’s face appears on the viewscreen. ‘My older self has gotten soft, it seems.’ The two Doctors argue with each other, as Casey watches. Finally, the regular Doctor says that they will meet on Earth. He lands the Tardis.

 

Casey steps out of the Tardis.... onto the bridge of the other Tardis. The old Doctor looks at her with surprise and suspicion. He asks her who she is. She says she is Casey of course. The old Doctor demands that she prove she is Casey, so she whispers something in his ear that makes his eyes widen and eyebrows go up.

The Regular Doctor enters the Tardis, frustrated with the antics of the old Doctor. He demands they put an end to things. The old Doctor agrees. He lands his Tardis on the bridge, and they step out to thoroughly demoralized Admiral and high command.

The old Doctor tells them that their invasion is over. All their armaments and weapons are exhausted. They couldn’t hurt a kitten. It’s time to leave earth forever.

The Gargon Admiral grumps that they have no fuel to go anywhere but Earth. Humanity might as well proceed with their extermination, now that they’re helpless and unable to defend themselves. The Gargon says that at least they planned to give humanity a chance to fight back.

The regular Doctor tells them that they can leave. The asteroid that they blasted to pieces had a core of the pure radioactive element that powers their ships. All they have to do is harvest the asteroid, and they will have enough fuel to make it to the next star system. There is a planet there, not habitable now, but with 500 years to prepare, it could be the new homeworld for the Gargon race.

The Admiral says that with the fuel, they could re-arm and continue the invasion. Casey asks them, after all that has happened, if any of them trust each other to re-arm? The Gargons look suspiciously at each other. Finally, dispirited, the Gargon commander admits that peace is their only good option, they will not re-arm.

Peace is always the only good option, the Regular Doctor tells him.

**************

Back on Earth, the two Doctors, Casey and K9 are having lunch at a sidewalk café. Regular Doctor gives the old Doctor a circuit board that he can use to stop the invasion in 500 years. The old Doctor asks what would have happened if he had not been here for this invasion. The regular Doctor looks away and says that the Gargons would not have made it to Earth. The old Doctor says he will have to do something about that, then. The Gargons were not evil, just desperate. 

The old Doctor says that he’s changed, he’s not as much fun as he used to be. The regular Doctor says that things are different, the Time Lords caught up to him and he works for them now. The old Doctor’s Tardis appears, and the old Doctor vanishes into it.

Casey asks if the other one really is Doctor Who in the future. The regular Doctor says that the future and past sometimes change places, but the other one was really him. Casey wonders if she’ll ever see him again. The Doctor wonders if she already has.


	12. Meanwhile in a Council House in London

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three London fans of the classic series have gotten their hands on a fourth generation VHS tape of the cartoon show....

A Council house in London, 1988, four young fans gathered around a television set, one of them holding a battered VHS copy in his hands....

‘Third generation, so it should be watchable.’

‘You can’t tell. That Cyberman episode was supposed to be third generation, but it ended up being tenth.’

‘God almighty, that episode was bad. Cybermen, more like cyberpoofters.’

‘Gaybermen!’

‘Cyberwankers’

‘Swishermen.’

"Worst! Cybermen! Ever!"

‘Okay, it’s starting. This image quality isn't so bad, it might actually be third, generation.’

‘So this is the famous ‘two doctors’ episode.’

‘This is the first Doctor here. What’s he doing?’

‘He’s just standing on an astroid, watching the stars go by.’

‘Is this supposed to be dramatic? I think someone’s watching too much jap anime over in Canada.’

‘The spaceships reflected in his glasses, nice image that.’

‘Nasty aliens, eh. Too bad they don’t move very much.’

‘Yeah, the animation is pretty crap.’

‘You notice how they all look exactly the same, and have the same voice. They sure did spend money on this. Might have broken their colouring budget to have two aliens looking a little different.’

‘He’s back again, looking pissed. Which Doctor is he supposed to be anyway?’

‘Dunno, a new one I guess. He doesn’t match up with any so far.’

‘Okay, the opening.’

‘So they just explain the whole thing every episode?’

‘Music is pretty crap. Why couldn’t they use the proper theme music.’

‘I dunno. Rights I suppose. It’s crap though.’

‘Okay, now commercials.... and more commercials.... and more commercials.’

‘Sure are a lot of commercials’

‘Okay, here’s the 2nd Doctor.’

‘Hey, is that companion black?’

‘I think so.’

‘She’s pretty young. It’s not right, an old guy hanging out with a young girl like that. It’s kind of creepy, you know. It’s like this is the Pedo Doctor! Come sit on my Tardis console little girl, I’ll let you work the lever....’

‘Eeuuch, where do you get this stuff?’

‘It’s not me! She’s what, twelve? Fourteen? And she’s hopping about time and space with a grown man? That’s not right.’

‘She’s at least sixteen.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Sod off!’

‘That voice sounds familiar. Who is this Doctor played by?’

‘According to the magazine article, Jon Pertwee did the voice for the second Doctor.’

‘Doesn’t look at all like Pertwee. Is he supposed to be the Third Doctor?’

‘According to the magazine, they got him in to do it at the last minute. I think they had some other voice actor lined up. But he was interested so they jumped right on it. It was too late though, to change the artwork.’

‘Maybe this is supposed to be the first?’

‘Doesn’t look like Hartnell at all.’

‘Maybe he’s a later Doctor. Maybe they’re both later Doctors? Or the same, and he’s just the aged version of the cartoon Doctor.’

‘They look pretty different. The regular cartoon Doctor is twice his size and shoulders you could balance a watermelon on.’

‘Wait! Wait! He just said he’s younger than the other Doctor, despite him looking older.’

‘So maybe he’s supposed to be the first Doctor, Hartnell, and the other cartoon one is the second. That would make the other one Troughton?’  
‘Nah.’

‘Well, if he is the younger Doctor, and he’s played by Pertwee, then maybe that makes him the third Doctor, which would make the cartoon Doctor the sixth Doctor.’

‘Where do you get sixth? He doesn’t look like Colin Baker at all. 

‘He has a long coat.’

‘He could just as easy be the fourth.’

‘Doesn’t look like any of them, or act like any of them for that matter. Maybe he’s supposed to be the eight. You know, comes after McCoy?’

‘That makes sense.’

‘But how would they know?’

‘What?’

‘How would they know what the eight Doctor looks like. Do they have inside information or something? Did the BBC fill them in on their plans?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Hey, did the old buzzard just surrender? That’s not what a Doctor does!’

‘Commercials again!’

‘Back to the other Doctor. He’s not so bad.’

‘What in bleeding hell is that accent? Is that supposed to be British?’

‘Sounds like Milwaukee on the Thames.’

‘San Franciso on Avon.’

‘Chicago on the Loo.’

‘Crap that’s awful. It’s like they never met anyone with a real English accent.’

‘He looks like Egon.’

‘Who?’

‘Egon from the Ghostbusters. You know. Egon Spengler?’

‘Yeah, he does. We’ll call him the Egon Doctor.’

‘More commercials.’

‘Doesn’t sound a bit like k9.’

‘You’d think that they could have spent a little money get the voice right. That’s just tosh is what it is, complete tosh.’

‘Okay, I get it. So instead of invading Earth, he gets them to fight each other. Clever.’

‘Why are they firing on an that moon and not each other?’

‘I dunno. I guess the Egon Doctor reprogrammed all their weapons.’

‘Is that the same moon that the Egon Doctor was standing on at the beginning.’

‘Don’t know. They all look alike, I guess. Moons, I mean.’

‘Okay, see, there it is again. He says that the Egon Doctor is older. That makes the old Doctor the younger one.’

‘A nastier one too. Looks like his plan was to get them to blow each other up, and kill each other off. The Egon Doctor just messed up their weapon systems.’

‘So the Egon Doctor saved the aliens?’

‘Well, he kept them from killing each other...’

‘That’s interesting, so they were working against each other as much as they were working together?’

‘Hey, stop there. Back that up!’

‘What?’

‘See right there, the old buzzard didn’t know who the companion was. He’d never seen her before. She has to tell him. That’s how he knows who she is at the beginning of the episode. The thing he whispers to her at the beginning is the thing she whispered to him just now. The old Doctor she meets here, he travels back to the start of the episode and meets her there. Clever!’

‘I don’t know.... I think that’s a little too clever for them.’

‘That’s tosh. It’s just a cartoon. I don’t see them getting up to anything like that. No one would pick up on it.’

‘Rewind, you’ll see.’

‘Okay, hold on....’ 

‘Maybe’

‘Continue.’

‘Sorted out now.

‘Okay, I get it! That’s why the Egon Doctor was standing on that particular moon. It had the rocket fuel on it, so that’s the one he picked out for them to drop all their missiles on.’

‘Christ! More commercials. This is like five minutes of story and half an hour of commercials!’

‘Wait, what did he just say?’

‘I think the Egon Doctor just said that he wouldn’t let the aliens get to earth at all. That’s pretty cold blooded.’

‘Yeah, but at the same time, he was just making sure that their weapons couldn’t harm anyone. That was his plan. It’s the old Doctor who was going to make the aliens   
blow each other up. He says he’s funloving, but that’s a nasty sense of fun.’

‘They just mentioned about the time lords!’

‘So there’s Time Lords in this cartoon.’

‘Yeah, right at the beginning, remember. The Doctor here is working for the Time Lords as their agent. They tell him what to do, where to get off.’

‘Kind of like Pertwee.’

‘Sort of, except more he’s a regular agent, not an exile or anything.’

‘Well the Time Lords were always shoving the Doctor about and getting him to do stuff. Remember Genesis of the Daleks?’

‘Yeah, but in the Cartoon, it’s like he’s full time, on salary, you know. Not just getting sent on an occasional mission.’

‘Not too happy about it, he says they caught up to him.’

‘I really get the feeling the Egon Doctor is supposed to be a third.’

‘And the old Doctor is running free.’

‘So the old Doctor is the First Doctor.’

‘Or the second.’

‘Commercials. Commercials. Commercials.’

‘It’s over! Those are the flipping credits. And that crap theme music!’

‘Okay boys and girls, so what do you think? Who or not Who?’

‘Not!’

‘Thumbs down’

‘Compete shite.’

‘Just terrible, cheap, sloppy, the Doctors are all wrong, the voices are all wrong, the animation is primitive, the music is awful. There’s not a single thing right with it.’

‘So we’re all agreed. Absolutely tosh? Completely and utterly irredeemably terrible? An insult to the very concept of Doctor Who?’

‘In spades. Worst ever.’

‘Yep.’

‘Shite. Sub-shite.’

‘Okay, does anyone want to watch it again?’

‘Yes!’

‘Yes!’

‘Put it back on!'

'Can you get any more episodes?'


	13. The Voice of the Nelvana Doctor - An Interview With Maurice LaMarche

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maurice LaMarche is one of the most successful voice talents in animation. He's done everything from Ghostbusters and Inspector Gadget, to Pinky and the Brain and Futurama. Here, he talks to us about his most memorable role. Playing the Doctor for Nelvana's Doctor Who.

Interview with Maurice LaMarche, voice actor who played Doctor Who in the Nelvana animated series. August 13, 1992, by Anna Boudreau, published in the fall issue of the Tardis 204 Fanzine.

 

T: Is it true that at your first convention, you were booed off the stage and had eggs thrown at you?  
M: (laughs) That story grows with the telling. Actually, it wasn’t actually a convention, it was a public relations sort of thing in England, just after we’d wrapped up the season. There were a few boos, and some plastic cups and litter thrown, but no eggs. There were pickets and signs though.

T: Still it must have been pretty unpleasant.

M: It’s not the happiest moment of my life. But there you go. This was back in 1990, the live action series was on hiatus and a lot of people, fans, were afraid it was going to be cancelled permanently. So they saw the cartoon as a threat. There was this idea that if Doctor Who was done as a cartoon, then that would kill the live action show somehow.

T: Strange idea.

M: It was the times I guess. People were tense, and they fixed onto anything.

T: Second question: What kind of British accent is that anyway? That you use for the Doctor.

M: No mercy! A real one I think. I didn’t have any specific English accent in mind. Upper class, but not too upper class. Doctor Who is a time lord, so he’s not of the common ilk. But he also gets his hands dirty. Educated. London. I had a teacher in high school with a similar accent.

T: So how did you end up being the Doctor?

M: I fell into it really. I was trying to break into stand up. But while I was waiting for that, I was starting to do a lot of voice work. I’d done work for Nelvana before... We actually began together. I did voices on Nelvana’s first two cartoons - ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ and ‘Easter Fever.’ I think that was in 1980. And then I was in ‘Rock and Rule’ not a huge part or anything. Then I went back into stand up and doing impressions. A few years later, around 1985 or so, around that time, I started to do voice work again. Inspector Gadget, Transformers, GI Joe. I guess, when Clive was looking, they remembered me.

So one day, I get a call from Clive and he goes ‘You know that British TV show, ‘Doctor Who’? I’m going sure... But I had no idea. I thought it was a cooking show or something. He says, ‘we’re doing a cartoon for it. We think you’d be perfect. Interested.’ Well, I said I was a big fan of the show, and of course.

T: But you actually had no idea?

M: None, whatsoever. Mind you, once Clive was off the phone, I was looking it up pretty fast. I managed to get the essentials of the show, and I caught some of it on PBS, before I went in for the auditions.

T: You had to audition? 

M: Sort of yes. You go in, you read the script, you sort out the character. They had already decided on me. But you want to make sure it’s going to work out before you commit.

T: What was your take on the Doctor? Were you influenced by any of the live Doctors.

M: Not too much. A little by Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. Those are the ones I saw on VHS or PBS. It gave me the idea of what they were about, what the show was about. But after that, it was my take.

I saw Doctor Who as really, a very gentle, very caring man. He looks young, but he’s immensely old, and terribly powerful, he’s seen it all, done it all, he’s incredibly intelligent. He can run rings around anyone. If he looked at it that way, we’d all be like insects to him. But he doesn’t look at it that way. He likes people, and aliens, he’s fond of us, so he tries to protect us. He still sees the beauty in things. Even the bad guys, he can see the good in them, evil alien invaders... They’re not so bad to him.

And he’s funny. That comes from me, from being a stand up comic. He’s got this gentle observational humour. It’s not pratfalls, its not cruel. He’s just been around so long, and has such a good heart, that he can see the lighter side of things.

T: You mentioned Jon Pertwee. What was it like to work with him on the cartoon?

M: I didn’t. You mean the Two Doctors? We didn’t work together, we recorded separately. I did meet him a couple of years later at a convention. He was just a charming gentleman, we had a great time on panels together and hanging out. Whenever I go to one of these ‘Doctor Who’ conventions, I’ll look to see if he’s going to be there too.

T: Have you met any of the other Doctors? 

M: I met Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison. Colin Baker of course. Colin is a card, we have a great time. Patrick Troughton sent me a note, this was back in 1986, I   
didn’t even realize it until after he’d passed away.

T: Do they treat you as one of the fraternity.

M: I don’t know what that means. We’re all just actors. I think we have some common ground, because in different ways, we’ve shared the role and we’ve all brought different things to it.

T: You actually have a costume for your Doctor that you wear at conventions sometimes.

M: Yes, although I’m a bit heavier than in the cartoons. Early on, when we were doing PR in England for this, I suggested that we get a costume, so I could appear as the character. Well, Clive said there was no budget for that. But a few years later, some Canadian fans got together and put together a collection. It’s not much of a costume, it’s a nice trenchcoat with a question mark on it, and an oversized fob watch with a very long chain, and some boots and things, spectacles.

T: You have fun with it.

M: It is fun. The fans as a whole are terribly nice people. As a voice actor, sometimes you don’t get a lot of recognition, so it’s wonderful to be at a convention and have people come up and tell you how much they’ve enjoyed your work. Even the English fans have come around, pretty much every convention, someone from the British Isles will come up and apologize for egging me.

T: You’ve done other voice work for the cartoon.

M: Mmmm here and there yes. I do the Cybermen, for instance. I like doing them, it’s just my ‘Orson Welles’ impression, with an electronic tinge. I like the Cybermen, our version of them anyway. They’re not evil so much as oblivious. They like being Cybermen and they can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be a Cyberman, its so grand. So they intend to convert the rest of us, whether we want to or not. They see it as doing us a favour - upgrading us.

T: What about other voice work? What else have we heard you in?

M: GI Joe. I’m in Ghostbusters, I do the voice for Egon. You know Pinky and the Brain? I’m the voice of the Brain ‘Tonight Pinky, we take over the world!’ Ducktales. Dennis the Menace. Matt Groening, the man who does Simpsons, he’s working on something called Futurama, I might be in that.

T: You’re the voice for Egon in the Ghostbusters too? He and the Doctor look very similar? Are either of them based on you? Was the Doctor based on Egon.

M: Maybe fifty pounds ago (laughs). I don’t think so. The artists do what the artists do. The look of my Doctor was done by Ted Bastien. I think it would be arrogant of me to think he had me in mind when he was doing his drawings.

T: The animated Doctor has accumulated a cult following. How did you see the animated Doctor as different from the general run of Saturday cartoons. Or was it different?

M: A couple of ways. I think that a lot of Saturday morning adventure series had to tiptoe around violence, because of the sensors. But when you come right down to it - GI Joe is an army show, He-Man is basically Conan, and even Transformers are fighting a war. So in a sense, they embraced violence, they just had to be careful how they handled it. I think that Doctor Who, as a character, generally disliked violence, and that was part of who he was. He did his best to avoid it. The Doctor won through trickery, or outsmarting, or just by being able to figure things out.

There’s other things. I think we were smarter and funnier, as a whole, than a lot of the other cartoons. Even when others were trying humour, it was sitcom humour or pratfall humor. Or humor was a lot more adult.... not in the sense of being dirty... But in the sense of appreciating the world. We had wit.  
And we were contrary. Some people really liked that. Every story we did, we wanted to turn something on its head. Ancient astronauts, chariots of the gods - that was one of my favourites. The image of all those spindly gray space aliens sweating to build the pyramids by hand, with stone tools and hammers and chisels, hauling with ropes and rollers. Every episode, we wanted to take what people expected, and turn it completely around, and make something of it.  
I don’t think that there was anything quite like us on Cartoons. On television even. Except for the live show.

T: The backstory for the cartoon Doctor was different than the series. Even Tardis stood for something different.

M: Oh the heat we took for that from hardcore fans. I understand why they did what they did. I mean, they were introducing the cartoon to a brand new audience. But the fans, especially the English fans... they were really upset. I honestly didn’t see the much difference. But I heard there were petitions and angry letters and everything. I think that when they were developing the second season they decided to bring the bible much more closely into line with the live series. They were even talking about bringing back Jon (Pertwee) and even some of the other Doctors. But the damage was done. 

T: Do you see the cartoon series as integrating into the live series. Do you see your Doctor as a real Doctor.

M: I’m not sure how to answer that. I certainly played the character for a number of episodes. He’s real enough for me. You can turn on the television and watch him for hours.

T: But does he fit into the series continuity. And if he did, where would he fit?

M: (laughs) Your fannishness is showing through. (Clears throat) If my Doctor was to fit anywhere, I’d say he would go between Troughton and Pertwee. The Time Lords catch him as Troughton, they turn him into my Doctor the make him their agent, eventually, he gets fed up and refuses to do their bidding, and they turn him into Pertwee and strand him on Earth. But that’s just one theory, and there are a hundred more.

(Laughs) Really, I think sometimes it’s a struggle just getting the cartoon episodes to fit into a continuity with each other. Integrating them into the live series is just too much. It’s different formats, different markets, everything is different.

T: We hear rumours from time to time of an animated Doctor Who movie. Is there anything to it? Or in proposals to re-launch the series?

M: I’ve heard those same rumours. I can’t say much more. There’s always rumours floating around. If they do it, I’m right there. I think Cree and Frank would be as well. I really enjoyed doing Doctor Who, he was a terrific role.

T: What about the Dark Dimension, the 30th Anniversary special? 

M: Okay, that’s a little more solid. There’s some word that BBC Enterprises is talking to Nelvana as a production partner for a live action special. We’ll have to see if anything comes of it.

T: If it does come about, do you think you’ll have a role in it.

M: I’d love one. If they ask me, I’ll do whatever they want. Carry water? Make sandwhiches? Hold a boom mike? Be an extra.... The man in the street who points at a Dalek! I can’t imagine my Doctor will be in it, unless they find an actor who looks like the cartoon. Then I don’t know what.... Would I dub him? I don’t think my Doctor fits into the series continuity, I’m over on the side, like Peter Cushing. But I’d love to be part of it somehow.

T: Here’s to hoping that it comes together, and that you do get to be part of it. Any last words?

M: Just that doing Doctor Who was a wonderful experience, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s a terrific role, and I love the fans who have given back so much.

T: Thank you for the interview. 

M: Thank you.


	14. Episode 7:   The Daleks!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Passenger planes are disappearing. A mystery is afoot. The Doctor's greatest enemies have arrived on Earth. Can even he stop the threat of the Daleks!

INTRODUCTION SCENE

A passenger jet flies across the sky. Cut to interior, pilot and co-pilot at the controls, looking out the window. Cut to passengers sitting in their seats, a stewardess going up and down the aisles. Focus on a passenger sleeping at a window seat, the camera zooms in to a window. As the window expands, there is a ziggurat shaped object floating, keeping pace with the aircraft. A Dalek.

The view changes to the outside of the airplane. Flying Daleks surround it. A Dalek lands on top of the cockpit, just above the windows. Electrical bolts fly from the Daleks base as it fixes onto the aircraft. In the cockpit, the crew are electrocuted, crying out as bolts sizzle across them. Two more Daleks land on the wings above the engine. Cut to inside the plane, a dalek moves down the aisles directing the passengers to remain in their seats and make no movements. They are now property of the Dalek Empire.

ROLL OPENING - MONTAGE OF IMAGES, THE DOCTOR’S THEME SONG, AND THE VOICE OVER EXPOSITION FOR THE SERIES.

DOCTOR WHO - EPISODE 7 ‘THE DALEKS’

Written by: Peter Sauder and Terry Nation.  
Directed by: Raymond Jafelice  
Starring: Maurice LaMarche as the Doctor, Cree Summer Francks as Casey, Don Francks, Frank Welker....

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Act I

The Sheriff and Detective are meeting with a number of policemen from different countries (in different uniforms - Bobbies, Turbans, French caps, Berets). The Sheriff announces that he knows someone he might be able to help. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a communicator. 

The Doctor and Casey appears behind him, just before he is about to activate it, causing them to jump. Time traveller, he explains, and presses the communicator. What seems to be the problem, he asks cheerfully. The Sheriff explains that several planes have vanished mysteriously in midflight from all over the world and no one is sure what to do. 

The Doctor notes that usually this just happens in the Bermuda triangle. Probably just some dimensional instability. No problem. Find out where they went, and then it should be simple to retrieve them. The only trick is to figure out where they are going...

**************

Another flight, this time different markings. Once again, the Daleks take the aircraft. This time, we see the Daleks piloting the plane onto a gigantic UFO. A docking bay opens like a gigantic maw. As the aircraft enters, we see dozens of passenger jets sitting, stacked in bays, giving an indication of the size of the ship.

As a Dalek rolls down passenger jets aisle, announcing that the passengers are now property of the Dalek Empire, it rolls past the Doctor, seated and hunched down, holding up a magazine. The Doctor, for the first time ever, looks terrified.

***************

On board the Tardis, Casey, K9, the Sheriff and the Detective are waiting to hear from the Doctor. K9 reports that the aircraft has disappeared, but there is no contact from the Doctor.

Casey worries that something has happened to the Doctor. She asks K9 if there is any way of tracking the Doctor’s communications signature. K9 says that the Doctor’s carrier wave is still detectable, so Casey orders the robot to track it.

**************

The passengers are being marched off the airplane single file. The Doctor is in the middle of the line, keeping his head down. Abruptly, he darts off into the cargo compartment, rooting around. A Dalek orders him to come out. He claims he needs his bag, it has his medicine. The Dalek says that no possessions are required and the he will obey or be exterminated. The Doctor comes out, he has a girly white umbrella under his arm, and a bag of odds and ends.

*************

As the captured humans are lined up for processing, a strange looking Dalek appears moving smoothly away on the far side from the other Daleks. Because of the humans in the way, only the Dome is visible, but the Dome is clearly ridged and the torch lights on the dome seem wobbly. A Dalek scans it, but the electronic signature is fine. It vanishes through a door.

On the other side of the door, the Doctor stands up, putting down a white umbrella with light bulbs poked through the sides. The Doctor adjusts the settings on his fob watch, muttering about adjusting the electronic shielding so that the Dalek sensor scans don’t detect him. 

Satisfied, he uses the watch as a radio whispers a message to K9. Change of plans. It’s the Daleks. It’s the worst case scenario. Under no circumstances is K9 to pilot the Tardis to follow him....

***************

Cut to shot of the Tardis in the gigantic Dalek landing bay. Surrounded by Daleks. The camera pulls back, the Tardis becoming smaller and smaller, as we see it is not just surrounded by Daleks, but by dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of Daleks, all pointing their weapons.....

 

COMMERCIAL BREAK

 

ACT II

On board the Tardis, a sea of Daleks appears on the viewscreen. K9 announces ‘Danger! Danger! Danger!’ and immediately dematerializes the Tardis.

Casey and the Sheriff are confused. As K9 explains that these are Daleks a race of robotic beings that are the most feared conquerers in the Universe.   
The Daleks are relentless. They have exterminated thousands of worlds. Entire civilizations have fled before them. The Daleks exist only to destroy. And in all their history, nothing and no one has ever been able to stop them. This is accompanied by a montage of images of burning landscapes, and Daleks hovering through the air, blasting everything. 

Casey asks if they can rescue the Doctor. K9 advises that probability is that the Doctor is dead. Casey gasps.

K9 states that they have another problem. The Tardis is unable to escape the Dalek ship. Its force fields have gone to full power. They are trapped and must rematerialize.

*****************

The Doctor, looking scared, hides behind a corner as a squad of Daleks glide past. Looking around, he skulks down corridors, using his fob watch to open doors. He finds a Dalek occupying a communication station. 

From concealment, he gets the Daleks attention by thowing a small glass bulb at its carapace. As its eyestalk swings around and around, he throws another object down a corridor. When the Dalek follows it, he rushes to the station, using his fob watch as an interface to close the door. Mumbling to himself, he debates what he needs - schematics, life support, power plant, force fields, communications. On the communication station screen a succession of images appear, including the stolen humans and passenger jets. At the sound of the Dalek returning, he scrambles away to hide.

The Doctor heads down another empty corridor, almost stumbling into a cavernous room filled with Daleks. As the Doctors listen, the Daleks discuss the processing of the captured units. They refer to the Supreme Dalek.

Suddenly, the Doctor’s watch goes off, as Casey’s voice rings out through it. ‘Doctor! Doctor! We are in trouble! We are trapped on the Dalek ship!’   
All the Daleks freeze, then their eye stalks all swivel down the empty corridor. The Doctor is already running. 

The Doctor rushes onto a bay of hover carts. Distracting a Dalek with his umbrella, the Doctor kicks it off the hover and commandeers it, bouncing off walls, hovers and Daleks as he flees around corners. Squadrons of Daleks chase, firing wildly, crying out ‘Exterminate!’

***************

Meanwhile K9 materializes the Tardis on different sections of the ship, as signified by different backgrounds. Each time it materializes, the Daleks respond faster and faster, pouring firepower on the ship. K9 announces that the Tardis is in danger of imminent destruction. That sooner or later, the Daleks weapons will overwhelm their defenses.

Casey asks what can they do? The Sheriff says that they will not go down without a fight. K9 states that the Daleks must be stopped. Emergency evacuation will commence. After that, they must locate and use an escape pod. They will have five minutes to escape, before K9 detonates the Tardis. Casey cries out that K9 will be destroyed. K9 responds that there is a probability that the Daleks will be too.

Suddenly, Casey and the Sheriff materialize outside of the Tardis on a catwalk. Below them, Daleks surround and fire upon the Tardis. They watch as it dematerializes. At the end of the catwalk, a Dalek spots them. They flee in the opposite direction.

****************

Meanwhile, the Doctor is still flying the hover madly through the cavernous interiors of the ship. He turns a corner, several Daleks in hot pursuit, and there’s a crash and immense fireball. The Camera pans across the wreckage, including the Doctor’s torn coat.

But then the camera rises, showing the Doctor’s watch chain wrapped around a jutting piece of steel girder. The Doctor climbs up it, struggles into a narrow passageway, perhaps an air vent, and disappears.

***************

The Dalek has cornered Casey and the Sheriff. It announces that they will be exterminated....  
　

COMMERCIAL BREAK

 

ACT III

Two Daleks have cornered are about to vaporize Casey and the Sheriff. Suddenly, a fob watch flies out on the end of its chain. The chain wraps around the Daleks gun and yanks hard. The first Dalek fires on the the second, destroying it. The gun barrel flies free. The Sheriff then disables the first Dalek, shooting out its eyestalk.

Casey runs up to the Doctor and hugs him. 

But the Doctor says that there is no time to waste. More will be coming. She warns him that they must find an escape pod. K9 is in the Tardis and will self destruct to try and destroy the Daleks.

The Doctor cries out that this will also kill all the humans held hostage as well. And it will be useless, unless K9 detonates in precisely the right location. He checks his watch, but he cannot communicate with K9 or the Tardis because it is continually materializing all over the ship. He needs a stronger signal.

Crawling through the corridors, the Doctor and his companions see the Tardis materializing up ahead of them, and they race to reach it. But before they can, it vanishes again. The Doctor realizes that K9 has randomized the Tardis movements, so there is no way to tell where or when it will appear. He cannot summon the Tardis, only K9 can bring it to them, but he does not know where to go. He will need a signal to triangulate. Luckily there are three of them. Daleks find them again and they must flee.

*****************

In the Dalek’s control room, the Supreme Dalek is barking orders at the its underlings as they scurry about.

Suddenly, the Doctor’s fob watch on its chain swings out and wraps around a Dalek. It freezes up, sizzles, electrical currents surge over it, and it crumples to a smoking ruin. The Doctor strides into the chamber, retrieving his watch.

Casually he kicks the wrecked Dalek over a ledge and announces that Earth is under the protection of the Time Lords.

The Supreme Dalek states that the Daleks do not respect the authority of the Time Lords and orders that the interloper be destroyed. Daleks fire. The Doctor holds up the watch which generates a shield. The Doctor announces that if they try that again, they will be destroyed immediately.

*****************

Meanwhile, Casey and the Sheriff ambush a Dalek at a control station. Accessing frequencies provided to them by the Doctor, they are rewarded when K9 appears on the screen. K9 announces that the Tardis shields are down to 20%, and that self destruct is in two minutes. Casey hurriedly tells K9 that the Doctor has new orders, and he must link the Tardis computers to this station.....

****************

The lights in the control station flicker, as the Tardis materializes behind the Doctor. The Doctor announces that the Tardis will detonate, destroying the ship. The Supreme Dalek replies that the Daleks never surrender, their command is victory or death, and in the end, they always win. They will win. 

The Doctor asks why they wanted the humans. The Daleks state that it is irrelevant, they are no longer required. The Doctor responds that the Daleks have fulfilled their mission, and the Supreme Dalek agrees. 

The Doctor points out that if the ship is destroyed, whatever they have taken or learned from kidnapping humans will be lost. Again, the Supreme Dalek states that this is irrelevant. The Daleks will simply regain the information and proceed. The Doctor points out that they will be delayed.

The Doctor proposes that in exchange for not destroying the Dalek ship and not interfering with the completion of the mission, that the Daleks release the humans and their aircraft. The Daleks state that they do not negotiate. The Doctor points out that if they do this, their mission will not be delayed. They agree to release the humans. The Doctor says he will wait. The lights flicker again.

***************

Scenes of Passenger Jets leaving the Dalek spaceship one after the other.

***************

The Doctor, having confirmed on his watch that the last humans have escaped, announces that it is time for him to go.

The Supreme Dalek says no. In the intervening time, the Daleks have locked their force fields around the Tardis, it cannot escape and cannot explode. The Supreme Dalek gloats that they have captured a ship of the Time Lords and its operator, and soon the whole of space and time will be open to the Dalek Empire. A great reward for freeing some worthless humans. The Supreme Dalek orders that the Doctor be taken.

A bolt of energy from a Dalek gun passes through the Doctor, and then through the Tardis, both of which flicker. The Doctor reaches down, presses a stud on his watch, and vanishes.

One by one, all the lights start going out all over the Dalek ship.

***************

At the control station, the Doctor, the Sheriff and Casey run into the waiting Tardis. Cut to the Tardis is outside the Dalek ship, flying away.  
Casey says that she is glad that it is over. The Doctor grimly replies that it is only beginning.

***************

On board the Dalek ship lifts up into space on the way back to the homeworld, the Supreme Dalek announces that the mission is complete and that they have the information that the Empire requires for the conquest of Earth. It orders that the information be displayed.  
On the screen, instead of classified information is a message from the Doctor. ‘Earth is off limits to the Daleks.’ Suddenly, the message turns into a countdown. The Dalek ship explodes.

 

COMMERCIAL BREAK  
　

EPILOGUE  
　  
The Doctor is arguing with the Time Lords on the view Screen. The Time Lord Magnar angrily accuses the Doctor of recklessness. He almost allowed the Tardis and himself to be captured by the Daleks. 

The Doctor denies the accusations. With equal anger, he demands to know why the Time Lords did not warn him about the Daleks reaching Earth.

Finally, Magnar admits that they did not know. The Doctor is visibly shocked.

Magnar's companion suggest that perhaps it is time to abandon Earth. The Doctor refuses and breaks the connection.  
　


	15. SF Debris reviews the Nelvana Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Popular web Series, SF Debris reviews the Daleks episode of the Nelvana Doctor Who series, and discusses its role as a turning point in the show.

The Nelvana Doctor Who is probably one of the most notorious of Saturday cartoons. I can’t think of another cartoon where the star voice actor got death threats. It’s hard to believe it, twenty-five years on, but you have to remember that Doctor Who was a British institution, and it was in trouble, and here you had a Canadian company turning it into a children’s cartoon for the American market? Well of course, the hard core fans were going to be outraged. Imminent cancellation was one thing, but this was humiliation added in, dragging their favourite show down into the muck. Insult is always resented more than injury.

Now, however, with the passage of time, we can look at the cartoon series and see a reasonably faithful effort at adaptation, one which highlighted both the strengths and weaknesses of the original series.

The episode we’re reviewing today is the Daleks. It’s a critical episode, because even in a series that was already controversial, the Daleks created a whole new controversy for the dark tone and violence.

The episode is credited to Peter Sauder and Terry Nation, with the story being that Nation’s writing participation amounted to signing his paycheque. There’s reason to doubt that, however. When things blew up, Terry Nation was still trying to make a go of it and working on McGuyver in Hollywood, he needed to distance himself from the product, so Sauder ended up taking the blame. It’s the old story, victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan... unless you can pin it on someone.

But I tend to like this episode, including for some of the reasons that made it controversial.

The first season of the animated series gave us almost two different Doctors. It was like two different series, with the tone being completely different. The first half, the first six episodes, gave us a Doctor so perfect he is almost boring. He’s like Superman or Sherlock Holmes. He’s not challenged, it sucks the drama out, because he’s so much smarter than everyone, you know he’s going to win. His companions are superfluous, he’s so perfect he doesn’t need them. The only question is how. His adventures were light, almost comic. 

What saves the first half of the season from being completely unbearable is that the stories are cleverly outrageous. The Doctor manages to be charming, his problems manage to be inventive.

But with the Daleks, the series goes through a shift in tone that children, and not a few adults found shocking. The story here begins like most of the previous episodes - there’s a situation. Airplanes are disappearing. They call in the Doctor. He comes up with a clever plan to solve the problem. 

This is the Doctor that we’re used to - in control, six steps ahead of everyone else. This was also a problem for the supporting cast, because if the Doctor’s perfect.... what does he need anyone else for? This was a problem for the live series, but it was a bigger problem here where there was so much story to tell and so much less time to tell it in. Often the Doctor’s companions would simply vanish from the story, or stand around doing nothing.

All this changes when the Daleks appear, and one is going down the airplane aisle. Now, Saturday morning cartoons are not known for subtlety. There’s not a lot of expressiveness going on, and what there is is pretty bland. 

But here, we see something we’ve never seen and it changes the entire episode: Fear.

Suddenly, the Doctor is afraid. And he has good reason to be afraid. He’s not in control any more. In fact, through the episode, he’s not in control, there’s no master plan, he’s not six steps ahead. Instead, he’s improvising, he’s making things up as he goes, leaping desperately into the nearest ventilation shaft, pulling moves out of the air and things are going wrong. He warns Casey and the Tardis not to come, but he shows up anyway. There’s a point where K9 tells them that the Doctor must be dead. Another point where Casey’s mistimed call exposes him and leaves him running for his life. 

There’s a real sense of danger here. It’s danger we never really felt with the season one cybermen. Watch any cyberman episode back to back with this one, and you’ll see the difference. The season one cybermen were one step up from comic relief - they were missionaries crossed with Wile E. Coyote. They weren’t really evil, they were just misguided. The Cybermen were missionaries, they’d decided that being Cybermen was the best thing in the universe, and they wanted to persuade everyone to share it. But they tried to trick people into signing up with these wacky rube Goldberg schemes.

The Daleks were different. The Daleks were genuinely scary. Genuinely dangerous.

Now, you look at a Dalek, it’s almost comical. It’s giant salt and pepper shaker with an eyestalk with a round ball at the end? And for a hand it’s got a plunger? It’s ridiculous!

Except that the animated series has put a lot of effort into selling the Daleks as scary and dangerous. In fact, if you look at the previous episodes, you find a lot of throwaway references to the Daleks - the Cybermen warn about them, the alien invasions are actually alien races fleeing the Daleks. It’s not obvious or significant, until this episode, and then it comes together. 

The fact that the Doctor is terrified of them from the first moment he sees them does a lot to sell that. K9's monologue and the visual montage of the Daleks as world destroyers sells it. The fact that once K9 knows it’s the Daleks, he just assumes that the Doctor is dead sells it. The fact that the Doctor is so desperate, that he’s on the run, that things are out of control sells it. 

Even at the end, when we find out that the Time Lords who control the Doctor are afraid of the Daleks, that keeps on selling it. The Time Lords find the Daleks are coming, and the first thing they want to do is run.

It must have come as a shock to the kids tuning in on Saturday morning. They expected something PG, an action series where no one was really hurt, nothing was really at risk, with a hero who had always been in control. Suddenly, they were watching him running for his life, there’s real danger. This isn’t what Saturday morning signed on for.

It’s not just the Daleks being scary. Look at this scene where the Doctor confronts the Supreme Dalek. Starts off by killing a Dalek as casually as swatting a fly...

Doctor: I will detonate the Tardis and destroy you all, unless you surrender.  
Dalek: The Daleks do not surrender. Daleks win. Daleks always win. This is why the Universe fears us.   
Doctor: You won’t win if you are all destroyed.  
Dalek: Irrelevant, more will come. The mission will   
be completed. We will win.  
Doctor: Are the humans your mission? Why do you want them?  
Dalek: The humans are irrelevant, we have completed our mission to study them. They have no further value to us. They may be destroyed.  
Doctor: If the humans are irrelevant, then you don't need them any more. Release them, and I will spare you.  
Dalek: Rejected. The Daleks do not negotiate.  
Doctor: It's not negotiation, it's logic. You don't need them. If I destroy you, then your mission fails, you will never get the information back to your empire.  
Dalek: Irrelevant, more will come, the Mission will begin again, and you will not be there to stop them.  
Doctor: But it will slow you down. It will take time. You don’t have time. The Time Lords know you’re here, they are already moving against you.  
Dalek: Irrelevant. The Daleks will win.  
Doctor: But you won’t be there to see it, you’ll be gone. You won’t be part of the victory, you’ll just be failures.  
Dalek: Irrelevant -  
Doctor: (Interrupts) Let the humans go, or you all end as failures. Final warning: One... Two.... Three....  
Dalek: (Long pause) Agreed.... The humans will be released.

The Doctor’s been nice up to this point. But he’s showing his own scary ruthless side. It’s a ruthless side that comes out at the end, when he double crosses the Daleks and blows up their ship. Of course, the Daleks were going to betray, but they’re bad guys, it’s expected. The Doctor is a good guy, so there’s something subversive about his double cross, he’s not as nice a guy as we thought. In the end, the Doctor’s won a battle, but it’s made very clear to the audience, and the children, that the war is just beginning, and it’s going to be nasty. The first half of the series is light the second half gets very dark.

Up to this time, all Nelvana had to worry about was British fans up in arms over the perversion of their idol. Now, all of a sudden, they were facing a legion of angry parents upset over traumatized toddlers, and the network screaming down their necks. No wonder Terry Nation tried to distance himself. 

According to legend, CBS came very close to cancelling the series right then and there as a result of that episode. The only reason that they didn’t was that most of the rest of the season was already in the can and paid for, and they didn’t have anything else to run. Still, they moved the show immediately to a later time slot, early Saturday afternoon, trying to reduce the damage.

What everyone overlooked was that kids liked to be scared. That had been what saved the original show back in 1963, the fact that they’d brought in an enemy that terrified the children. And that’s what happened this time. When they moved the show, the audience moved right along with it. In fact, the audience grew. The kids talked about it, told each other about it, and they followed the show as the network tried to move it somewhere less objectionable. That kind of loyalty only showed up for a few of the Saturday morning cartoons.


	16. Episode 8:   The Mind Worms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mind Worms have reached Earth. These evil parasites take over the minds of everyone they come across. Can even the Doctor stop them before they take over Earth?

Intro....

A busy street scene, men and women going about their business. From an alley, comes a flash of light and then a steady glow. No one seems to notice. In the alley, a spot in mid air glows, the air seems to congeal, spinning around and around the glowing point which expands. A ‘wormhole’ appears. A wino sits watching it. 

As the wormhole expands, an immense thick bodied worm forces its way through. The wino’s eyes widen in terror. He climbs to his feet, throwing the wine bottle, which crashes harmlessly against its leathery side. The worm humps towards him, trapping him against a wall. As the wino shrieks in terror, the worm extends a tentacle-like stalk. When it touches the wino, his terror vanishes. His features are flooded with relief and pleasure. Then his eyes roll to white. 

A female voice over - ‘This world will be satisfactory.’

The Wino falls to the ground, emptied. A close look will show his body dessicated. The worm humps a couple of times, and then it’s back splits open, and a literal fountain of tiny worms take to the air. 

Out on the street, the pedestrians pause. A woman looks at a tiny worm that has made contact with her skin. She smiles broadly. All over the street, people have stopped and are smiling. 

Camera zooms in. One of them is Casey.

ROLL OPENING - MONTAGE OF IMAGES, THE DOCTOR’S THEME SONG, AND THE VOICE OVER EXPOSITION FOR THE SERIES.

DOCTOR WHO, EPISODE EIGHT ‘THE MIND WORMS’  
　  
Written by: Dale Schott and Peter Sauder  
Directed by: Raymond Jafelice  
Starring: Maurice LaMarche as the Doctor, Cree Summer Francks as Casey, Don Francks, Frank Welker....

 

COMMERCIAL BREAK

 

Act One

The Doctor’s Tardis materializes. The Doctor steps out, checking his watch, obviously pleased with himself. K9 floats out behind him. He looks around for Casey but does not see her immediately. He frowns and checks his watch again.

Then Casey calls out his name. The Doctor turns, grinning. But then his smile vanishes, replaced by a look of horror.

Casey comes into view, looking like herself, cheerful and outgoing, with a large slug perched on her shoulder. Casey tells the Doctor that the most wonderful thing has happened. She’s made a new friend.

The Doctor tells her to stay back, not to approach any closer. He asks her if she knows what the slug is riding on her shoulder.

Casey replies that it’s alien, but a friendly alien that just wants to help the human race. It’s helping her right now. She approaches the Doctor, who backs up, his expression tense. He tells her that its not a friendly alien, it’s a mindworm, one of the deadliest species in the universe.

Casey just laughs. She asks the Doctor where he got that idea. The worm is talking to her, and it’s completely harmless. She tells the Doctor he just needs a hug, and then he’ll understand the worm is friendly. Casey lunges at the Doctor, who is apparently frozen with horror.

She stops just short, when K9 fires a laser at her feet. The spell of paralysis broken, the Doctor recovers somewhat, retreating back into the Tardis, promising Casey that he will find a way to rescue her.

**************

The Tardis dematerializes, and then materializes on a city street elsewhere. The Doctor steps out. All of the people around him are carrying mindworms on their shoulders. They stop and smile in unison, calling out ‘Doctor’ and converging on him. The Tardis vanishes again, this time appearing in a small town. The locals, all wearing mindworms, look up and call out ‘Doctor.’ It vanishes again.

***************

Cut to the Sheriff, tall and thin, he has both of his six guns out, and is backing steadily away. All around him are smiling, worm infested cowboys and cowgirls, all advancing on him. As the Sheriff backs up towards the wall, the Tardis materializes behind him. The doors open, and the Doctor yanks him inside.

****************

Inside the Tardis, the Sheriff angrily demands to know what is going on. The Doctor explains while frantically working the Tardis controls.

Mindworms are a telepathic hive mind creature. They all have the same mind, but many bodies. When they come in physical contact with another creature, they take over its mind, and all the creatures knowledge and memories become part of the mindworm’s collective intelligence. Worse, the mindworms can use the bodies of anyone it touches as extensions of itself.

K9 announces that it has completed its calculations. The Doctor tells it not now.

The Doctor explains to the Sheriff that any race or being touched by the mind worms simply becomes a tool. The mindworms don’t care about humanity, they’ll simply turn the world into a worm garden. He presses a button.

The viewscreen flashes. It’s one of the Timelord Guardians, the female this time. The Doctor tells her that the mindworms have reached Earth. She acknowledges this, and tells the Doctor that Earth will be placed under quarantine. She will prepare his new assignment. In frustration, the Doctor slams his hand on the console and demands that she tell him how to stop a Mindworm invasion. She replies that he cannot. Once the Mindworms reach a world, it is lost.

K9 repeats that it has finished its calculations.

The Sheriff asks the Doctor what they can do. The Doctor says he doesn’t know yet. Then he smiles. But... He says, they’ll figure something out.

K9 announces that it has calculated that in three days and six hours, the entire human race will be consumed.....  
　  
COMMERCIAL BREAK

Act 2

 

Casey, wearing her worm, is pounding at the door of the door of the Tardis calling for the Doctor to let her in. The camera pulls back to see the Tardis surrounded by dozens of people, all of them calling out for the Doctor, pounding and asking to be let in. Casey promises that the Doctor has the mindworms all wrong. All he has to do is touch one and he'll see that they're good.

Inside the Tardis, the Doctor and the Sheriff look at a viewscreen. It is filled with smiling people, all carrying worms on their shoulder, pounding at the viewscreen, asking to be let in, calling out the Doctor.

The Sheriff notes that it is funny that all these people know the Doctor. The Doctor explains it is a function of the mindworms telepathy. Every mindworm knows everything its host knows. And every other mindworm knows everything that that mindworm knows. The Sheriff, understanding, says that would mean that if just one person knew the Doctor, they all would. But who? Casey, responds the Doctor grimly, it’s taken casey.  
K9 reads out the names of cities and towns coming under infection. They ignore him.

The Sheriff asks why the Doctors people, the Time Lords, can’t stop the Mindworms. The Doctor says that they are afraid. If the Mindworms took over just one of them, they would gain the knowledge and power of time travel, and then they would overrun the universe. That’s why they want to get into the Tardis so badly, the Sheriff realizes. Casey knows too much about the Tardis, the Doctor admits, and so now all the Mindworms know.

Sheriff Frank asks how they can stop the Mindworms. The Doctor says he doesn’t know. But if they can’t, the human race is doomed. K9 continues to reel off cities coming under infection, and those completely taken over.

The Sheriff asks if the worms can be destroyed. The Doctor responds yes, you can destroy individual worms. But that won't affect the people they've taken over, because the link is still place. Unless you destroyed all the worms at once, the telepathic links they created would still be in place. There’s no way to destroy all the worms in the Universe.

Sheriff Frank ventures that sometimes the way to solve a problem is to go directly to the source. The Doctor notes that he has been ordered to leave Earth anyway, and he doesn't have a better idea.

**************

The Tardis materializes on another world, in the center of a clearly decaying city. The skies are purple and green. The landscape is dotted with immense skyscrapers, domes and bridges, most of them visibly disintegrating or half collapsed, partially covered with vines. The streets are filled with muck. A number of different aliens, all dressed in rags, all carrying worms, or serving them in some way.

In the center of the city is an immense sunken ampitheatre, where immense worms lounge. Aliens in rags, tiny in proportion to the giant worms, work ceaselessly, scrubbing their sides, feeding them from tubes, carrying things to and from them. At the bottom of the ampitheatre is a sea of muck, from the center of which a small platform rises.

The Tardis materializes on a platform in the center of the ampitheatre. Tendrils and tentacles rise up to wrap around the blue box. A glowing forcefield emerges, pushing them away, and they withdraw.

The Doctor and the Sheriff step out. The Sheriff asks if this is where the worms come from. The Doctor replies that no one knows where the worms come from. This used to be the homeworld of a mighty interstellar empire, until the worms came. Now it’s just a swamp. All the worlds of the Empire are just swamps. This is what we are trying to save Earth from.

From the muck rises an immense cyclopean worm, larger than any whale. Even with a fraction of its bulk exposed, it rises well above the level of the Tardis. At what might be its head, a gaping maw is surrounded by clusters of tentacles on both sides. The tentacles reach out and snare a half dozen unresisting aliens, each with small worms crawling around their body.

‘Welcome Doctor’ the aliens mouth in unison, clearly controlled like ventriloquist puppets. ‘Welcome Sheriff Frank.’

It knows us, the Sheriff whispers to the Doctor. It knows everything that Casey knows, the Doctor replies.

‘Are you the head worm,’ the Sheriff asks. There is a sound of laughter. There is no head worm, we are all one. Sheriff Frank pulls out his gun and shoots the giant worm. It crashes into the muck. The Doctor looks impressed. ‘Now, you’re one less,’ Sheriff Frank says. A second worm, even larger, rises up from the muck, its tentacles curled around its own. ‘Destroy as many bodies as you like,’ the Worm tells him, ‘we are all one.’ ‘Much obliged,’ Frank says, drawing bead. The Doctor pulls Sheriff Frank bank. ‘They’re trying to distract us,’ he tells the Sheriff.

K9's voice comes up. Unknown energies surrounding the Tardis.

The Doctor steps forward and says that if they know him through Casey, they know what he can do. He demands that the Mindworms release all humans and vacate Earth forever. The Mindworms laugh. They tell him that he has no power over them. He says that he will not allow them to destroy Earth. They tell him that they will not harm Earth, only adjust it so it functions properly. Another world of swamps and worms, the Doctor responds bitterly.

The Tardis’ force field crackles. The Doctor and Sheriff retreat to the interior of the Tardis. They are trapped. The mindworms have surrounded the Tardis with a forcefield that prevents dematerialization. A worm appears in the viewscreen. The Doctor and his time machine, and not Earth, are the true prize that the Mindworms seek, it tells them.

Frantically, the Doctor pushes buttons and pulls levers. The Tardis vanishes, only to reappear in another part of the city. The mindworms around the Tardis in this new location continue in mid-sentence, telling him that he cannot escape. The entire planet is shielded. The Tardis vanishes and reappears again and again, as the Doctor frantically manipulates the controls.

With frustration, he tells the Sheriff that the shielding is complete. Nothing can get in or out. They're trapped. In the viewscreen a collection of worms tell the Doctor he cannot escape...

 

COMMERCIAL BREAK

 

Act 3

Sheriff Frank is creeped out by the Mindworms and their victims speaking in unison. The Doctor bitterly comments that they could speak in unison throughout their empire, every creature on every world uttering the same words, simultaneously.

Sheriff Frank asks how Mindworms could possibly do this over the vast distances between worlds. It takes light years to get from one world to the other. The Doctor explains that the Mindworms are connected by a wormhole network, gateways or pathways under space between worlds. Their group mind extends through the wormholes to unite their worlds.

The Sheriff asks if that’s how they got to earth. The Doctor replies that yes, physical objects can travel through wormholes too. Suddenly, the Doctor brightens. That’s how they can escape. They can’t leave this world because the Mindworms have put up a shield. But they can’t shut down the wormhole! The Tardis can home in on and travel through the wormholes to an unshielded planet.

With renewed enthusiasm, the Doctor leaps to the Tardis console, barking instructions to K9, pulling levers, yanking pulleys, pressing butttons, flicking switches and turning dials. The Tardis lurches and shudders inside, the time rotor rising and falling. The Doctor and Sheriff must struggle to keep upright.

Outside, the Tardis flies, moving through the sky, homing in on a glowing wormhole. It emerges on a world of swamps and pink skies, then on a desert world or red skies and golden clouds, then again on what appears to be a gas giant, with bands of coloured gas and floating icebergs, and then Earth!

The Doctor and Sheriff have a brief moment of celebration upon regaining Earth. They’re free. But then the image of Casey, smiling, with a worm on her shoulder appears on the screen. She tells the Doctor that he cannot escape.

The Doctor checks his console and slumps. She is right. The Tardis cannot leave the planet or travel through time. They can travel the wormholes but it will be the same everywhere.  
K9 informs the Doctor that additional wormholes are opening, and that the timetable has been accelerated. It is now a matter of hours before the Mindworms have completely taken over Earth.

The Sheriff asks if they can blow up the wormholes. The Doctor says that they can’t. But if they had the wormholes frequency, they could overload them and shut them down.   
But they don’t have the wormhole frequency, only the Mindworms know that. The Doctor gets a cunning look.  
The Sheriff asks if the Doctor has an idea. He says that he might, but if it doesn’t work, then all is lost.

*****************

The Doctor’s face appears on a gigantic television screen on the side of a building. He announces that he will surrender himself to the worms on one condition. Earth will be released from the worm’s control, and they will never bother the planet again.

The Mindworms refuse. Earth is theirs now. Sooner or later they will overcome the Tardis defenses. The Doctor then asks for Casey to be freed from the Worms mind control, and that she and the Sheriff be free to leave Earth and seek safety elsewhere in the universe in the Tardis. The Mindworms agree to let Casey and the Sheriff go, but say that they will keep the Tardis. Casey and the Sheriff will be given a   
spaceship. The Doctor very reluctantly agrees...

****************

Next scene, the Sheriff is telling the Doctor not to do this, there must be another way. The Doctor says that they’ve tried everything and this is all that is left. He is holding K9 in his arms.

The Tardis materializes in the middle of a crowd of Mindworms and their slaves. Casey steps forward, holding a large Mindworm, in the same fashion.

The Tardis doors open.

The Doctor is holding K9 like a weapon. He warns the mindworms to try nothing violent. Casey laughs and tells the Doctor that they do not need violence. He asks the Mindworms to keep their promise, to free Casey and send her and Sheriff Frank to another world far away. This time, the worm speaks, and promises.

The Doctor reaches out his hand. The worm on Casey’s shoulder extends long tentacles, wrapping around. It tells the Doctor that they have changed their mind, they will not release Casey or Sheriff Frank. But it thanks the Doctor, with his knowledge of the Time Lords, the worms will rule all of time and space. The worm tells the Doctor it can feel his resistance, but can feel it breaking down. The worm minds of a thousand worlds are bearing down, and he cannot resist for long. The Doctor responds, just long enough, and tells K9 ‘now!’

A line shoots out from K9 to the Tardis console. ‘Tardis computer banks downloading!’ All over the world, people collapse as mindworms scream at the influx of hyper-information. Casey screams. The Mindworm tells the Doctor that his strategy will fail. 

The Doctor reveals that he has set the Tardis to the frequency of the wormholes, and tells K9 to pour all of the Tardis’ power into the link. The Mindworm screams and disintegrates. All over the earth, mindworms scream and disintegrate, leaving their thralls waking up and startled with no memory. The Tardis power flows through the wormhole portals on all the worlds that we’ve seen the Tardis travel, turning the portals from gold to angry swirling red to white. On all these worlds, the Mindworms scream and begin to disintegrate as the portals explode. The image goes white.

When the screen returns, Casey is kneeling over the Doctor. He’s charred and disheveled, one of the lenses of his glasses is broken, and his overcoat is smoldering. She’s begging him to wake up. He looks up and sees her and smiles. He asks her if she remembers anything. She tells him that all she knows is that she was walking along and then she was here, inside the Tardis and he was like this, and it was like this....

They look around. The Tardis is dead. Panels are melted or scorched, all the lights are gone. The rotor is broken. The ship is derelict. K9, also badly damaged, rouses itself. The three of them depart the Tardis. Behind them, a single light flickers and turns back on....  
　

COMMERCIAL

 

Epilogue...

The Doctor, Casey and the Sheriff are having breakfast at an outdoor cafe.

A screen flickers in the air. It’s the Time Lords, both of them visibly angry. They complain that he almost gave away the secrets of time and space and endangered the entire universe. The Doctor responds that the Mindworms already had the power to trap a tardis, it would have been a matter of time before they found the secrets themselves. He says that the Mindworms wormhole network has been permanently destroyed, there’s no longer a mindworm empire. A threat to the Universe has been ended. The Time Lords respond that they will consider his punishment, but that he is confined to earth. The screen vanishes.  
Casey and the Sheriff, ask what that was about? The Doctor says nothing. The Sheriff asks if he is really exiled. Is Earth his punishment.

The Doctor smiles. He says that there’s no place in the universe he loves so much, and no place he would rather be. Earth is where his friends are.

 

Next Episode: The Daleks are back! Next episode on Doctor Who, the Daleks have returned to Earth, this time with their Titanic Digging Machine! Can the Doctor stop the Daleks and their machine before earth is destroyed?


	17. The Voice of Casey - Interview With Cree Summer-Francks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cree Summer-Francks, the voice artist for Doctor Who's Casey Jones is interviewed about her character and role.

Interview with Cree Summer-Francks, voice actress who played Casey Jones and K9 in the Nelvana animated Doctor Who series. August 21, 1992, by Anna Boudreau, published in the fall issue of the Tardis 204 Fanzine.

 

T: You look a lot like your Doctor Who character, Casey Jones.

S-F: (Laughs) That’s not exactly a coincidence. I’ll tell you a secret. Around the time that Nelvana started looking at doing its Doctor Who series, I was doing a lot of voice work for Nelvana. I was in their Care Bears movies, in 1985 and 1986. I was in Droids for three episodes as Princess Kneesha, in Ewoks for eight episodes as Princess Gerin. So I was around all the time, my picture was in the top of their files, and they were comfortable with me, not just as a performer, but with this kind of subject matter. So when they wanted Ted Bastien to do his drawings, and they were sending over photographs and things, well....

T: So it really was you!

S-F: Oh yes. Everyone recognized me in the production sketches. A friend called me up and said ‘it’s you!’ He even drew me with the same clothes I used to wear back then. Even the name.... ‘Casey’ it’s short for ‘Cree Summer’. It was originally Casey Franks, in the first drawings, but they changed it to Casey Jones. Yes, it’s me.

T: So if they ever wanted to do a live action version of Casey Jones, they wouldn’t have far to look....

S-F: Call me! Call me up, baby! I’m right here! (Laughs)

T: Were your first roles with Nelvana? You must have been young.

S-F: I think I did Doctor Who when I was nineteen. But it wasn’t my first. My first voice acting was Inspector Gadget, I played Penny. You know, the smart one that got everything done. It was great. I was sixteen years old, and I had my first job and it was being a TV star! That was a terrific gig. Sixty episodes, all I had to do was go in and read the lines and get paid. Wow! After that, I was hooked on showbiz. Maurice was in Inspector Gadget too, by the way, he played Chief Quimby. Then, lets see, after that, I did voices on a couple of Strawberry Shortcakes. I did a live role on Night Heat. Then I got involved with Nelvana. There you have it.

T: You worked with Maurice Lamarche before Doctor Who?

S-F: And after, we did Ghostbusters together too. I played Chilly Cooper in that, he was Egon of course. It’s a small community, everyone crosses paths again and again, especially if you know what you’re doing and easy to work with.

T: How did you like playing Casey for Doctor Who?

S-F: She was cool. I liked her. You get to like all your characters. Penny for Inspector Gadget will always be my favourite. Penny was really the star of that show, and did all sorts of heroic stuff and solved the problems. Casey’s more a supporting character, she’s there to give the Doctor someone to talk to and along for the ride. But I liked her. Mostly, it was a gig. Sorry.

T: No need to apologize. What about the stories?

S-F: I liked them. It was always fun to get the scripts, I’d go ‘wow, where do they come up with this!’ Sometimes I’d laugh right out loud. Especially when Maurice was sneaking a line in.

T: Maurice was involved in the writing?

S-F: Yes and no. Well, Maurice, he’s a stand up comedian, an impressionist, an actor. So he’s a creative person, like we all are. And Doctor Who, that was Maurice’s thing. That was his big starring role, his character. So when he’d get the script, sometimes he’d start penning lines, things the Doctor should say, or little suggestions. He’d call me up sometimes and run some of it by me. 

I remember, he was a huge fan of Douglas Adams, he was always taking Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Books into the studio with us. Sometimes he’d read it out loud during breaks. You’d be surprised how much made it in, though he never got credit for that. The scripts were by the writers, no question, but he got to make contributions. In a sense, it was very much his show. He invested a lot more into it emotionally. You should have seen him in England, he was heartbroken.

T: Actually, we interviewed him, and he talked about it, it didn’t seem that bad.

S-F: Oh no, I was there. He had garbage thrown at him. And when he tried to answer a question, they’d shout him down. It got so bad that they shut down the press conference. Maurice was almost in tears. None of us expected this reception, it was unbelievable. Looking back, we didn’t know what we were getting into. We stumbled into a hornets nest. I was glad I was just the sidekick then, let me tell you... And anyway, who’d going to be mean to a 19 year old girl. But Maurice took the worst of it. We’d finished the run. But when they started talking about another season... He didn’t want any part of it at first. It took him a bit to come around. It was a shame, he was so proud of it, and it kind of ruined it for him. It got better of course. But he was pretty down at the time. It was very much Maurice’s show.

T: How about you. Maurice contributed dialogue. Did you ever get any lines in?

S-F: Oh no! (Laughs) I just said my lines and cashed the cheques. Well, that’s not entirely true. You do read throughs, you change things, more like what your character would say, or because something doesn’t make sense. I threw a good line in once in a while like that. But I wasn’t like Maurice, writing one liners in the margins of the scripts.

T: What about other parts? Did you do any other voices for Doctor Who?

S-F: Lots! I wasn’t just Casey, I was K9!

T: Was that confusing, to do them both at once.

S-F: Not really. I would record K9's dialogue separately. Then they’d electronically process it a little bit and loop it back in. When you do a character, you tend to inhabit that character. Casey, I was basically being myself. K9, I had to get into his head.

T: What’s it like inside K9's head? 

S-F: Cramped. He’s part machine basically, part dog. So very mechanically minded, very black and white. Very focused, even narrow minded. I saw him as fussy. He was a genius of course, he could do almost anything the Doctor could do. But he didn’t understand a lot - all the feelings and things, that was beyond him. So like a dog, he sort of understood what he understood, and all the stuff he didn’t understand, he just trusted his master. If we were happy, he was happy. If we weren’t, he might not understand why, but he was unhappy too. He was simple like that.

Oh, here’s a funny K9 story for you. Over in England, K9 calls the Doctor ‘Master’, I guess that’s okay in England. But over here it’s a little different. There was a non-white girl.... I’m plains cree actually, but some people think I’m light skinned black... Anyway, there’s a non-white girl who is doing the voice for K9? And she’s got to call the Doctor ‘Master’? Ohhh no, that’s not politically correct. There were all sorts of memos back and forth, I can show them to you. They had meetings. Me, I’m going, ‘whatever!’ But they got pretty serious about it. So anyway, they ended up deciding that K9 should call the Doctor ‘Boss’ instead. True story.

T: That's very cool. What about other voices? Did you do other voices besides K9 and Casey? 

S-F: Lots. Lots of screaming. And ‘Oh no, here comes a cyberman’ random lady voices, children’s voices. All kinds. Sometimes, they’d call me up and go ‘Casey, we need you to come in and do a couple of lines of filler.’

T: They called you Casey?

S-F: Oh yes. (Laughs) The apple didn’t fall far from that tree.

T: Who else did voice work for the show, any good guest stars?

S-F: My Dad! (laughs) Don Franks. I think he played a Sheriff. And a Time lord. He had a couple of regular parts. I got him his job, is that reverse nepotism? Between him and me and Maurice, we had the CanCon all sewed up.

And of course, Frank Welker. Frank's in everything. He's just a totally versatile voice performer. He did a lot, and I mean A LOT! He was in Inspector Gadget too..., I guess we're the Who-Gadget crew. And he was in Ghostbusters. He does the voice of Fred for Scooby Doo. Between the four of us, we did most of the voices in all the shows.

T: What was it like to do a cartoon series? Do you see the cartoons before hand?

S-F: It's all in studio. We just show up together. Sometimes I come in alone and just do the lines, but that's usually late in post-production. I like it better when we are all in the studio together. There's just more... chemistry, it works better. If you can't have that, it's good to have another person, even a non-cast member, to read the lines, so that you're really reacting to something rather than just reading. It makes a difference.

It's pretty casual. Usually very low pressure. We just show up in our regular clothes, hang out. We'll do a couple of read throughs with the script. Sometimes we get other stuff - story boards or production drawings. It's not necessary, but you know, if we can get that, I like it, it helps to paint the picture in your head, you know. I think it improves the performance.

We don't see the cartoons. They do the scripts and storyboards first. Then they get the voice acting done. Then they go off to Hong Kong or wherever and get the actual cartoon done. After that, they send it back here, it's edited, synched up, and if there's any follow ups, like lines need to be redone, or you need to change dialogue, or there's some filler... that's when me or Frank or Maurice will get called in. That's usually pretty short.

After that, I'll see the cartoon the same way you do. On Saturday morning.

T: Do you watch your own cartoons?

S-F: I used to (laughs). Not so much these days. I think the thrill wore off. And I'm pretty busy. There's always something going on. 

T: What do you think of the live Doctor Who show? Have you ever watched it?

S-F: Hmmm. I’ve seen some of it. It’s pretty good. I like Tom Baker’s stuff. And Colin Baker. I actually met Colin Baker, Maurice and I went out to dinner with him when we were in England. Very sweet man.

T: And what do you think of the whole ‘cult phenomena’ that’s grown up around Doctor Who, and the animated series?

S-F: I love it. I think it’s cool. I’ve been a guest at conventions, and there’s this whole amazing community that’s grown up around it. And our show has its own corner of that, I guess we’re a sub-cult. I’m kind of in the sweet spot, I’m there in it, but I’m not the big central character. I’m not on the spot as ‘THE DOCTOR!’ That part can overwhelm the Actor. I just get to be me, and I can take it or leave it. It was a good job and a lot of fun, but I’m happy to keep moving forward.


	18. Episode 9:   The Dalek Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Daleks are back with a giant mechanical excavator to steal earth's resources. Can the Doctor stop them this time?

A flock of flying saucers travels through space shepherding an immense machine. As the camera zooms in, we see mounted on each saucer a dalek. The machine is gigantic compared to the saucers and daleks. It has immense wheels, showing its made to cross planetary surfaces. There are huge digging cranes studding its sides.

Earth appears in the distance, growing larger and larger. The Daleks pilot the immense machine in to a landing, descending like a meteor, fiery tail and a huge crash. A couple of teenagers see the crash and go to investigate. From the edge of the crater, they witness a huge machine beginning to dig, even while Daleks flutter around it.

The next scene is of a single Dalek on an immense viewscreen. It says that the Daleks are here to mine Dalekanium, an element required by Daleks and useless to humans. The Dalek says that they will take what they need and depart. In the meantime, they will allow no interference. Any humans in the path of their machine are irrelevant and will be destroyed. One million humans will die for each attempt to stop the machine. This is the only warning.

The screen switches off, revealing the President and his cabinet, Sheriff Frank, Detective Walsh, Casey, K9 and the Doctor. Casey complains that if the Tardis was working, they could just transport into the Dalek machine to stop it. The Doctor reveals that he has been working on something and snaps his fingers.

Three red-top Daleks roll into the office. Panic breaks out, until the Doctor snaps his fingers again and they open up, revealing empty shells. This is how they will infiltrate the Dalek machine, the Doctor says.

Next scene - a platform of Daleks are re-entering the great machine. Among them are the three red-top Daleks. Occasional cutaway interior shots show that the three false Daleks are occupied by the Doctor, Casey and K9. The Doctor warns them that it is essential that they stay together while they try to find the machines control center. Almost immediately, however, they are split up. Casey radios that she and K9 will try to find the power core and disable it. The Doctor says it is too dangerous... but it is too late.

There are a number of scenes of large numbers of Daleks moving through the immense machine, gigantic foundaries and columns, gigantic hydraulic rams, giving a sense of the vast spaces inside. As Casey and K9 approach the power core, they other Daleks are increasingly paying attention to them. Finally, a Dalek orders the pair to halt and demands verification. When they cannot provide it, the Dalek denounces them as imposters and sets out the alert. K9 destroys it, but not in time. Casey and K9 flees.  
Casey sends out a warning, which the Doctor receives just in time to avoid rolling into a trap. Instead, he sends another Dalek in, which is destroyed. 

The Doctor flees down the corridors and ramps, leading to a high speed chase, with the Doctor’s Dalek swinging hard to avoid blasts. However, the Doctor’s Dalek is soon cornered and destroyed. A look around the corner shows the frightened Doctor hiding, having abandoned his Dalek just in time. But now the Daleks are closing in. He radios K9 that they must escape at any cost.

The high speed chase of Casey and K9 is not going so well for them either. Trapped at every turn, they detour into a maze of corridors, eventually ending up in a long corridor with many doors, and pop in and out of doors. They escape into a crowd of Daleks, but this does not help. The crowd of Daleks, surrounded, destroy themselves one by one until only Casey and K9 are left. They surrender, but the Daleks say they only require one prisoner, and blow up the one of the red tops. Beaten, the surviving red top opens up, and Casey exits.

Elsewhere the Doctor is running for his life, dodging ray blasts, there is a hole in his coat. As he runs, he desperately presses buttons on his watch, trying to figure out how the Daleks spotted them, the disguise was perfect. 

He determines that each Dalek has a signal beacon to verify their identity. He turns a corner, but it’s a dead end. He rushes to an airlock and locks the door. Immediately the Daleks start to burn through. Muttering to himself, he thinks he can recreate the signal. Sweat is breaking out on his brow. The door burns through, the airlock chamber is suddenly filled with Daleks all of them pointing their weapons at the Doctor and screaming ‘Exterminate!’

And then they stop, their eyestalks waving around uncertainly. The Doctor breathes a sigh of relief. They ask where the intruder has gone. The Doctor tells it that the intruder has escaped through a conduction duct. The Daleks announce they will resume the search. One of them pauses and tells him he doesn’t look like a Dalek. The Doctor does a Dalek impression, holding his arms out stiffly and warbling his voice, telling them that he’s a new model. An infiltration model. As the Daleks file out, the Doctor collapses in relief but soon becomes concerned over Casey and K9.

He cannot reach Casey at all. He tries K9. In the room full of wreckage and debris, a portion of K9's head containing an eye lights up. Elsewhere a tale attached to a piece of hip wags. K9 reports that he is destroyed. The Doctor asks if he can pull himself together. K9 replies unknown. The Doctor asks about Casey. K9 replies that she is either dead or captured, and powers down.

The Doctor is caught in a dilemma. Continue the mission and try to save the human race, or try to find Casey when she may no longer even be alive. There isn’t much time, the signal won’t fool them forever. The Doctor sucks his lip and flips his watch like a coin. It comes up heads... Casey it is.

Elsewhere a Dalek sweeper collects up the pile of wreckage that are the remains of K9 and the destroyed Daleks. The movement jostles some of K9's parts, which causes exposed circuit lights to flicker. Too many damaged components, K9's voice whispers, reconstruction impossible. Incorporating new components. A Dalek fender plate shakes and attaches itself to the tail. An eye stalk moves towards a fragment of K9's head....

Meanwhile, Casey is in the Dalek’s interrogation chambe, being tortured by the supreme Dalek. She is suspended from an X cross, and wires are attached to her, causing her to scream in agony. The supreme Dalek demands that she reveal her plans. She screams that only the Doctor knew the plan.

The Doctor strolls into interrogation chamber announcing that she does not know the plan. The assembled Daleks train their weapons on the Doctor, and then waver uncertainly. He is not a Dalek, but his signal beacon verifies that he is. The Doctor replies that of course he is a Dalek, he’s simply an infiltration model designed to destroy humans. As is Casey.

The supreme Dalek points out that Casey does not have a signal beacon to verify her identity. The Doctor replies of course not, the supreme Dalek has damaged it, so that it no longer broadcasts. The Daleks all waver uncertainly. The supreme Dalek denies this, stating that the Casey unit is not damaged. The Doctor responds that it is the supreme Dalek who is actually the human spy, and fiddles with his watch. 

Suddenly, all of the Daleks point their weapons at the supreme Dalek, stating that its signal is no longer verified. They attack, as the Daleks battle, the Doctor rescues Casey carrying her out and running away. She asks what the plan is, the Doctor replies that he doesn’t have one any more.

They run through the machine, until they encounter a group of Daleks, who point their weapons. The Doctor tries to bluff his way through, but his false beacon signal no longer works. They do not believe he is a Dalek. The Doctor tells Casey to run. Just before they fire to incinerate the Doctor, a wall comes crashing down between them. Casey’s found the door controls. 

Immediately, though, they are captured by another group of Daleks. The Doctor wraps his arms around Casey protectively. The voice of the supreme Dalek comes about, announcing that the Doctor and Casey are to be captured and brought to the control center for extermination personally by the Supreme Dalek.

The Doctor and Casey look very surprised. The Doctor shrugs, they were going there anyway. Casey points out that they’re going as prisoners, how are they going to be able to do anything. The Doctor replies that something may come up.

At the Control Center, the Doctor and Casey come face to face with the supreme Dalek. It’s looking very battered and scorched, but still functional. The Doctor tries to talk his way out, and then he tries to bluff, but neither works. The supreme Dalek powers up to incinerate them, again, the Doctor shields Casey.

Suddenly the Supreme Dalek is seized by a pair of immense metal jaws and crushed. The huge behemoth is shaped vaguely like a giant wolf made out of broken dalek parts. Several eye stalks wave from its face. K9 reporting, the thing announces. K9 has reconstituted himself with Dalek components, a lot of them. Casey, relieved, rushes forward to embrace the reconstructed K9, but the Doctor pulls her back just before the jaws snap shut on her. The Doctor asks K9 what its program imperative is. K9 replies ‘Exterminate!’

The Daleks attack the new K9, firing their weapons. K9 attacks back, firing its own blasters and crushing Daleks between its jaws. The Doctor and Casey take the opportunity to hide behind a console. The Doctor notes that it is the navigation console. He pulls out his watch and begins to fiddle with it.

The Daleks eventually blast k9 to pieces and wrecking much of the control room at the same time. In one of the final blasts, the core of K9's head is flung away, landing in Casey’s arms. The head says ‘Boss?’ ‘Miss Jones?’ 

Behind them, the Daleks start shooting, sending Casey and the Doctor fleeing. But suddenly, the Tardis appears in front of them. Jumping into it, they escape, leaving the Daleks staring at each other.

Epilogue - 

The Dalek Machine lifts off silently from Earth, heading into space. The image pulls back, and we see that it on a screen, with the Doctor and his friends watching. 

Sheriff Frank asks where its going. 

The Doctor replies that it is heading to the center of the sun, he corrupted the navigation protocols so that the machine’s computers would think that was the location of the surface of the earth. 

K9, now fully rebuilt chirps that they will not escape before it is too late. 

Casey says that its lucky that the Tardis somehow repaired itself and was able to rescue them in time, or they would have fried in the center of the sun too. Or did the Doctor know it was going to happen all the time? 

The Doctor replies that he had everything under control, he is the Doctor, after all. But the camera zooms in to show his fingers crossed.  
　  
　  
　  
　


	19. The Quotable Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor's best lines from the Nelvana series...

Quotes from the Animated Doctor Who...

"For a child, the only thing more upsetting than mischief gone wrong, is getting caught in mischief gone wrong."

Detective: "You think you're so smart."  
"I don't spend any time at all thinking about how smart I am, I leave that for people like you to wonder at."

"I don't believe in weapons, I believe in tools."  
Sheriff: "What's the difference."  
"With a weapon you can only destroy, with a tool... you can do anything."  
Sheriff: "So when the Daleks come at you... you'll build them a staircase?"

"The thing with time is that if you wait long enough, your enemies become friends. That's why you should never do anything to someone that you may someday regret."

"When someone wants to kill you, I find the best thing to do is change the subject."

"The most obvious impulse is usually the worst one."

"Any sufficiently advanced civilization will generally end up doing things the hard way."

"I like humans just the way they are. Alive. The conversation is better that way."

"Questions are always more lively than answers. Answers just sit there, like they're doing you a favour just for showing up."

"I find that the big difference between robots and living beings is that one is more easily confused."  
Casey: "Which ones?"  
"Exactly!"

"Of course I'm not perfect! I'm better than perfect, I'm the Doctor!"

"It's hard to dislike Cybermen, when they're so convinced that they're doing you a favour. But somehow, I manage."

"A Universe of Cybermen? How dull, we'd spend all our time polishing."

"A Universe of Mindworms? That would be like a universe of cybermen, but without the fun of polishing."

"The first step to dealing with anything dangerous is to say 'Hello'..."

"The first step to dealing with anything dangerous is to look closely..."

"The first step to dealing with anything dangerous, is to roll up a newspaper and swat it on the nose.... Unfortunately, Daleks lack noses."

"The first step to dealing with anything that doesn't seem dangerous, is to assume it's lying..."

"Confusion should be something you give, rather than have."

"Never do the expected, there's no fun in that."

"I hate meeting myself, he always wants all the attention, I don't know how other people stand me."

"An animal thinks its only options are fight or flight. A thinking being has a third option.... distraction."

"The ability to change the subject is universally recognized as the only true sign of intelligence."

"I rather like Earth, it completes the set."

"Of course its a watch. Look, its got a face and hands and gears and everything."  
Casey: "Does it tell time."  
"You know, I've never checked."

Casey: "You could always try hitting them with your ego."  
"That's cruel! I just want to win, not obliterate them!"

"The shortest distance between two points, is a conclusion."

"The thing with time travel is.... here, let me show you this bow and arrow.... the greater distance you travel, the harder it is to hit the exact target precisely."  
Casey: (stringing bow and sighting down with an arrow) "So where's the target."  
"It's on the moon."

"The hardest people to deal with are ones who think they know what they're doing."  
Casey: "Does that include you?"  
"You need to listen more carefully. I said people who think they know what they're doing. I actually do know what I'm doing."


	20. Episode 10:   Time Bomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can the Doctor save the Earth from a mad scientist?

PROLOGUE

Space, endless, black, filled with little points of light, stars vast distances away. As we look out upon space, a small blue green marble comes into view. The image slowly zooms in on the marble, as we make out clouds and seas, the suggestion of land. This is earth, a beautiful world, unique in all the cosmos.

As the image approaches closer and closer earth grows, it almost fills the screen. And then something strange happens. A tiny bright spot of light, for all the world resembling a star in space, appears on a corner of earth’s face. And then that spot starts to expand rapidly, a white circle that grows and grows across the surface of Earth. There’s the sound of thunder as the white spot advances. Suddenly, the screen is filled with white, pure blinding white energy, the shreds of buildings and trees and mountains flung before it.

The image pulls rapidly back, and we see the white sphere devouring earth as it is torn to pieces. The white sphere expands rapidly, and the moon itself disintegrates before it. The explosive wavefront catches up to the rapidly retreating image and engulfs it. As the incandescent wavefront of explosive fury approaches, we glimpse a wildly tumbling blue box hurtling close, expanding as it does until it fills the frame and then moves past. The image turns to follow it, as it vanishes, turning end over end, into the distance....

******************

Inside the Tardis, the interior was spinning and tumbling crazily. Sometimes it was on its side, sometimes upside down. The control room was a disaster. Casey was screaming. Only quick action by K9 had saved her life. When the Tardis began to tumble out of control, the robot dog had extended its limbs around her and then anchored itself to a section of the wall. Panels had torn loose, exposed cables were flailing. K9 disintegrated a piece of machinery just before it smashed into them.

"Doctor!" Casey yelled. "What’s going on? What’s happening?"

The Doctor was hanging by one hand to a lever on the Tardis console, struggling not to be torn away by the buffeting centrifugal forces. His glasses were askew on his face.

"I don’t know Casey," he called. "Something from outside the Tardis. But what? What could do this?"

The Doctor reached inside his pocket with his free hand, pulling out his pocket watch. With a supreme effort, he pulled himself towards the console, getting an elbow under the lever. Bracing himself, he opened the watch and pressed a few buttons.

And then everything was back to normal. The Tardis interior stabilized, up was up and down was down again. K9's head moved back and forth, it’s ears swivelled, and then it retracted its limbs, releasing Casey. She landed nimbly to the floor and ran to the Doctor. He was sitting with his back to the console, wiping his glasses with a cloth.

"Are you all right?" she demanded.

"I think so," he said, looking around. The interior was a wreck, there were hanging cables and broken panels everywhere. Some of the monitors on the console had exploded. Sparks flew and smoke hung in the air. 

"I don’t understand it, he said. "This can’t possibly happen. The Tardis is indestructible, it’s in a state of temporal grace. You’d have to blow up a solar system to...." He let his voice trail off.

Casey turned to the console and activated the viewscreen. It showed an empty starfield.

"Doctor," she said, as the Doctor pulled himself to his feet, "we’re in space. Whatever it was hurled us into deep space. Can the Tardis computer find our location?"

The Doctor was already doing calculations on the functioning part of the console, checking the results against his fob watch. His expression was grim.

"I’m reading a debris field...." He mumbled quietly to himself. Then he caught himself and addressed her. "We haven’t moved, Casey," he told her. "At least not very far."

"What do you mean, Doctor?" The young black girl asked. But there was a quiver in her voice, as if she already suspected the answer. "Where are we? Where is Earth."

"Earth...." The Doctor hesitated. "Earth has been destroyed.... All of it. There’s nothing left."

"Oh no!!!" Casey cried, she threw herself into his arms. He hugged her as she cried. "Oh no, oh no, what will we do, Doctor?"

The Doctor looked uncertain for a moment, looking down at the young girl in his arms. "It’s all right, Casey," his voice was reassuring, even while his expression was distraught. He controlled himself with a visible effort, and tried to look reassuring. "It’s all right."

"How," she cried, "it’s gone."

"Ah," he said, "that’s no problem. The Tardis is a time machine after all. We’ll just go back to... To... before whatever happened, and stop it. We can save Earth before it’s destroyed."

Casey pulled back to look up at him.

"But... But... Are you allowed to do that? Won’t you be breaking the Time Lords laws... Changing history."

The Doctor nodded slowly. And then he forced a smile.

"I rather like Earth. It completes the set. No, there’s nothing for it. I’m not going to allow Earth to be destroyed because someone got careless. If that means changing what’s already happened, so be it. Who is to say Earth was meant to be destroyed anyway? I say no. I like it just the way it is, or was, and I’m going to make sure it stays that way."

"But the Time Lords..."

"We’ll deal with them later."  
　  
Casey buried her face in the Doctor's chest. As she closed her eyes, the Doctor allowed the smile to fade away to a frown, his eyes grew cold and distant. He stroked her hair.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

TITLE ROLL AND MONTAGE

ACT ONE

K9 floated around the Tardis control room, welding panels, re-attaching cables, and generally fixing things. From it’s nose, a welding laser glowed, while slender metal filaments extruded from it’s body in a snakelike fashion.

The Doctor had all the panels of the Tardis central console raised, revealing a bewildering mesh of wires, pipes and blinking lights. Tinkering with a screwdriver, he checked the readings on his watch and made an adjustment. Finally, he nodded with satisfaction and began closing the panels one after the other, circling the console.

"Is it fixed?" Casey asked.

"Not nearly," the Doctor replied cheerfully. "We took a lot of damage, it will heal itself in time. But for now, it’s functioning again, we can travel."

"Back to the past?" Casey asked.

"Back to ‘our’ past," the Doctor corrected. "To before the time of the explosion, where we already existed."

 

"But I thought you said that was impossible. You can’t exist twice in the same part of time."

The Doctor nodded.

"That’s right, it is impossible," K9 chirped. "If you do that, a paradox will be created that will tear the fabric of time, and generally nothing good comes out of that. That’s why the Time Lords have a law against it. If you attempt this action, I am required to report you to the Time Lord authority. I have no choice, this directive is wired into my circuits."

The Doctor patted the robot dog. "Good old K9," he said. "That’s why you’re here, to keep me from breaking time lord laws."

"So we can’t save the earth?" Casey asked.

"Of course we’re going to save the Earth," the Doctor says. 

"It is forbidden, it is a paradox," said K9.

‘What’s a paradox between friends," the Doctor replied.

"That does not compute," K9 answered. "While I am online, I am authorized to prevent you from creating a paradox."

"But I’m not creating a paradox right now, correct?" The Doctor responded, 

"So you have to obey my orders."

"Correct," K9 answered, "and correct."

"Turn yourself off please."

"Affirmative, Boss." The small floating robot dog fell heavily to the floor.

"Well," said the Doctor, regretfully, "we’ll just have to do this without him."

"What happens when he turns back on," Casey asked.

"He’ll signal the Time Lords and then the game will be up," the Doctor said.

"Will you get in trouble?" 

"I don’t think a little trouble with the time lords, or a small rip in time, compares with the Earth being blown to pieces," the Doctor said. "One thing at a time."

He pressed some buttons on the console, yanked a lever, and then turned to the viewscreen. An image of Earth filled the screen, and then immediately vanished in a flash.

"Much too fast," the Doctor mused. "Let’s slow it down some more." He adjusted the controls. 

"Here’s a millionth of a second."

Again, the Earth vanished in a flash. He tried again, adjusting his instruments carefully, and then double checked on his watch.

"A trillionth of a second.... Good." 

This time, the wave of light seemed to crawl over the Earth.

"Now, let’s track it back to the source...."

The image on screen shifted. The wave of light retreated from the Earth’s surface. The view shifted as it diminished smaller and smaller, landscape and then city scape and then individual buildings showing up in resolution, until the light was just a pinpoint, emerging from a single building.

"There we are," the Doctor said, peering at his watch. "Mill Valley, Massachusets, Yoyodyne Energy, Research division, building twelve."  
He clapped Casey on the back. "Let’s go over there and ask them why they want to blow up the world, shall we?"

*********************

The Tardis doors opened in what seemed to be a steam tunnel. The Doctor poked his head out and looked around. The walls of the tunnel were lined with pipes and cables of every size. Every few meters a dim bulb supplied diffident light. Looking left and right, the tunnel vanished off into the distance at either end.

He stepped out, checking his trenchcoat. Casey followed him.

"Is this it?"

The Doctor popped his pocket watch open and checked a reading.

"Close enough," he said. He tapped the surface, frowned, and tapped it again. Satisfied, he pointed left. "It’s this way."

"Where are we, Doctor?" Casey asked.

"This is a service corridor for the Yoyodyne Research center," he said. "See those cables? They’re delivering a lot of power. An immense amount of power. Enough to light a city."

"But on the blueprint," Casey said, "there were a dozen service corridors."

"I know," the Doctor replied. "Whatever they’re doing here is consuming an immense amount of power."

"Or they’re trying to generate it," Casey said.

"If so, they’ve blown it." The Doctor smiled. "Blown it? No? Oh well."

He came to a fork in the corridors. Checked his watch again. "This way."

Soon, they came to a massive steel door.

The Doctor leaned up against the Door, scanning it with his watch. "Are you ready? Anything could be on the other side."

The door opened. A pair of security guards stood in the way, shining their flashlights on the Doctor and Casey. The Doctor blinked, holding up his hand against the flashlight.

"See," the security guard said to his companion, "I told you it wasn’t rats."

"Hello Tom," the Doctor said. "Of course it’s not rats. Do you know the damage rats could do to power cables like this?"

"What?" Security Guard Tom asked. "How do you know my name?"

"Yeah," Security Guard Carl demanded. "How do you know Tom?"

"How do you think, Carl. I’m conducting an inspection... For rats. I’m happy to say that this set of corridors is secure. No sign of them. Now, if you can take us to the central chamber."

"Are you supposed to be here."

"No, Tom, I’m not. I inspect power corridors for rats as a hobby. Now, can we get on with the next phase. I’d like to be able to wrap up the inspection before the weekend."

"There’s an inspection. We weren’t told."

"It’s a surprise inspection!" Casey said.

"For rats?"

"How else do you inspect for rats," the Doctor replied. "If you don’t surprise them, they hide."

"Who’s this?" Carl said suspiciously. "She looks too young to be an inspector."

"It’s bring your daughter to work day," the Doctor huffed. "Now can we get on with it? Or do I have to put you both on report?"

"Oh no! It’s okay sir!" Carl and Tom cried out in unison. They backed away from the steel door, opening it wide.

"How did you know their names?" Casey whispered in the Doctor’s ear.

"Name tags," the Doctor whispered back.

They opened the door to a vast cavernous chamber. Stepping forward, they looked around. The ceiling was high and vaulted, a dozen stories overhead. Massive cables ran across the floor, hung from the ceiling, all of them combining on a central machine, an assembly of coils and turrets, glowing lights, somehow vaguely resembling the Tardis console.

"By the Ghosts of N-Space," the Doctor swore, almost running towards it. 

"No wonder Earth was destroyed. No wonder the solar system was destroyed. The shock wave is probably still travelling to destroy stars. Do you know what they’ve built? They’ve constructed a Time bomb."

"A time bomb?" Tom said. "No this is the experimental flux energy generator. It says so right on the door."

The Doctor ignored him, examining the device, taking readings with his watch.

"A Time bomb," Casey replied. "Do you mean it’s on a timer? It’s pre-set to go off?"

"Yeah," Carl said, "what’s this about a bomb. I thought you were a rat inspector."

"I inspect all kinds of things," the Doctor replied absently, "power systems, rats, bombs, mouthy security guards..."

He glanced up, at Casey. "What? No. Well, yes. But not really. It is on a timer. It’s counting down as we speak. But that’s not what a Time Bomb is."

He stepped back to Casey.

"The Time Lords oversee time travel. They keep other races from it. It’s very difficult. Incredibly dangerous. Most civilizations which experiment with time obliterate themselves."

He looked down at her.

"Time is like a river, Casey," he said. "It flows. Now, supposing that you were able to stop time at some particular point..."

"Yes?"

"The trouble is that time keeps moving. Before you stopped it, after you stopped it, on both sides time still keeps moving."

"That doesn’t sound good."

"It isn’t. Because what happens then, is that time has to overcome the obstruction. Because it can’t go through, because it’s stopped, time on both sides of the stoppage goes elsewhere, it tears a hole through the very fabric of space, of the universe."

"Like that paradox, from travelling to a time we already existed in?"

"Worse, much worse. We would perceive it like an explosion, an explosion that destroys not only earth, but this entire section of space."

He paused.

"And somehow, someone built it. Madness."

"What’s he saying," Carl asked Tom.

"Something about a bomb," Tom replied. "In there."

"We should tell the professor. That doesn’t sound good."

The Doctor began moving steadily around the machine, kneeling at one point. Stretching up and holding his watch at another. He checked dials and readouts on the surface of the construct. 

"There’s a door here," he whispered, scanning the object with his watch, 

"how particular. It must be for internal calibration. Hmmm. I can’t open it, or halt the timer. I need the codes." 

He looked at the security guards.

"It’s locked," Carl said. "For security."

"And you are..."

"We’re just Security guards," Carl protested. "That there is Professor Kronot’s instruments room. He’s the only one who can get in there."

"Yeah," Tom said, "If there’s a bomb in there, we really should call the Professor."

Suddenly, from across the room came an angry shout.

"Hold it! Hold it! Who are you people? How did you get in here?"

Casey and the Doctor turned to look. In the distance, a small figure was visible, growing larger as he marched angrily towards them. It was an old man with a wild shock of white hair and a white lab coat, all crotchety limbs and angles, a cane in one hand, a binder of loose papers in another. He waved his cane angrily as he advanced on them. 

"This is a restricted space?" he yelled again, "How did you get in here? Answer me!"

Casey and the Doctor turned to face him. The Doctor stepped forward, and offered his hand.

"How do you do? I’m Doctor Who."

"I don’t care who you are!" The old man slapped his hand away. "How did you get in here? Security! Security!"

"Yes Sir!" Both Tom and Carl snapped to with quick salutes.

"Who are these people?" Professor Kronots demanded.

"Rat inspectors," Tom said.

"Are you mad?" The Professor snapped. "Do they look like rat inspectors?"

"Well no. It's take your daughter to work day, too."

"So you let anyone walk around a top secret facility... Because they told you they were rat inspectors?"

Tom and Carl were visibly sweating.

"Well, they mentioned a bomb."

The Doctor stepped forth smoothly.

"Do you know that you have an immense bomb here?" The Doctor asked, waving towards the towering energy generator.

"A bomb? Nonsense, it’s simply a flux generator. It couldn’t explode if you wanted it."

"Temporal flux?" The Doctor asked.

"Yes, of course Temporal flux, it’s perfectly ..." The Professor’s eyes narrowed. "How would you know it’s a Temporal flux."

"Because," the Doctor said, "I’m an expert in Temporal flux - " 

But he was cut off by the Professor. "You’re spies is what you are."

He turned to the Security guards. "What do I pay you for? Arrest them! My systems test is only an hour away!"

"Wait a moment," Casey began, as Tom slapped handcuffs on her.

"Unhand her," the Doctor said. But then Carl struck his head with a   
flashlight from behind, and he went down.

 

COMMERCIAL BREAK

 

ACT TWO

The Doctor woke up, rubbing his head. 

"Ouch, that smarts!"

He looked around. He was behind bars. Casey was sitting on the bench next to him. On the other side of the bars, one of the security guards, Carl, was sitting.

"What time is it?" The Doctor asked. 

"Forty minutes to the end of the world," Casey replied.

The Doctor checked his pockets. "Where’s my watch?" 

Casey nodded to Security Guard Tom, who was spinning it around his finger. The Doctor crossed over to the bars.

"Any chance I could get that back?" he asked.

Tom looked up. "No way. It’s probably full of spy stuff."

"It’s just a watch," the Doctor said, "I assure you."

"It makes funny noises every time I press a button."

"It has a few other functions."

Tom paused.

"Is it really take your daughter to work day? Like even for spies?"

"What?" The Doctor’s brow wrinkled. "I suppose it is. Every day is ‘take your daughter to work day’ for Casey and me."

"She doesn’t look like your daughter."

The Doctor sighed. "Not technically, no. But her parents died and I couldn’t save them. So I promised to look after her."

"That’s sad."

"I suppose it is." The Doctor examined the lock, trying to pick it.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to pick the lock."

"Good luck with that. Then what are you going to do?"

"Hmmm? Oh, go down to the Flux Generator and stop the test."

"Good luck with that too. The Professor’s got armed guards all over it, with orders to shoot to kill."

"That does complicate things."

"Professor Kronots used to take his daughter to work."

"Did he?" The Doctor asked. Then his brow furrowed, he looked up at Tom. 

"You said used to. What happened?"

Tom shrugged. "She died. It was really sad. The Professor wasn’t the same after."

The Doctor stood up from the lock.

"Tom," he said, "I have an important question. When did the Professor start to work on his flux generator?"

"After his daughter died. Why? Is it important?"

"Very important," the Doctor said. "By the way, Tom, careful with the watch. Be sure you don’t press the red button."

"The red button? What does it do?" Tom pressed it. He was illuminated in white light from the watch, and paralyzed.

The Doctor swung the cell door open. "Well that’s that," he said briskly.

"So, Doctor," Casey said, as she followed him out of the cell, "how do we stop it?"

"Change of plans," the Doctor replied, pausing to collect his watch from Tom. "We can’t stop it now, it’s too well guarded. Professor Kronots is going to stop it for us."

"How do we make him do that?"

"Because," said the Doctor, "I’ve figured out his secret. It’s not a Flux Generator. It’s not even supposed to be a Time Bomb, although that’s what it’s turned into. Professor Kronots has built a time machine. He just doesn’t realize he’s done it wrong."

The Doctor paused.

"But I know why he built it..."

***************

The Doctor and Casey were wandering down the corridor, peering at a holographic blueprint projected by the Watch.

"Okay," said the Doctor, "one more left and..." 

He looked up " Oh, hello, Carl!"

"You!" 

"Us," the Doctor agreed. "I thought you’d be guarding the Flux Generator."

"We’ve got a full squad down there," Carl said. "I’m guarding Professor Kronots."

"Excellent," said the Doctor. "That’s exactly who we are here to see."

"Well," Carl said, "He’s not in."

"Oh, where is he?"

"Classified."

"Bathroom then," the Doctor replied. "And when do you expect him back?"

"Classified."

"Any moment, then. Perfect," the Doctor said. "We’ll just wait for him in his office. You can just let him in when he gets back."

"I’m not going to let you in."

"Carl," the Doctor held up his watch, "here’s a message from Tom."

He pressed the red stud. White light bathed Carl, and he froze, paralyzed.

"Well that takes care of that," the Doctor said, letting them into the office.

"But Doctor," Casey asked, "is he going to be okay?"

"Certainly," the Doctor replied smoothly, locking the door, "the effects just last a moment. He’ll be fine in an instant."

"Oh good." Casey said. "How did you know that Professor Kronots had gone to the bathroom."

"I didn’t know," the Doctor replied. "I just needed to distract him while I pressed the red button."

Outside, Carl woke up and began to hammer on the door. "Let me in," he called. "You’re both under arrest for confusing an officer."

"But then if we don’t know where Professor Kronots is, or when he’ll come back, aren’t we trapped here?" Casey asked. "We can’t get out again with the guard outside. He could be anywhere, doing anything."

"Ah," said the Doctor, "but when Carl figures out he can’t get in, the next thing he’s going to do is go get Professor Kronots. Because the one thing Professor Kronots doesn’t want is strangers in his office, looking at his plans for a time machine."

******************

"You again!" The door burst open as Professor Kronots stormed in, security guards trailing behind him. "I’m in the middle of important work, how dare you interrupt-"

The Doctor looked up from where he was seated at the Professor’s desk, his feet up. He shuffled a few papers. Casey was sitting on the couch beside the desk.

"These are very good plans for a time machine...." The Doctor smiled. 

"Brilliant, even. You’ve just made a few mistakes."

Professor Kronots stopped.

"Wait outside," he told the security guards. They filed out. 

The Doctor put aside the papers.

"You’re a brilliant man," the Doctor said. "A genius even, to fool all these people into thinking that you’re building them a Temporal Flux Generator. You even fooled me. How much did it cost? Millions? Billions? They’d never build what you really wanted. Imagine what they’d say if they knew..."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"But it’s not a generator is it? The Doctor insisted. "It’s a time machine."

"Why would anyone want to travel through time," Casey asked.

"Why indeed," The Doctor said.

"Unless they wanted to find someone," Casey said. "Or rescue them."

"Someone they’d lost," the Doctor said.

"This is about your daughter," Casey said. "How did she die?"

Professor Kronots sat down heavily.

"Car accident," he said glumly. "I was too late."

"My parents died too," Casey said, stepping over and rubbing his shoulder sympathetically.

"And you’re trying to change fate," the Doctor said gently. "I understand that. I understand that so well. But you’ve got it wrong. You’ve made mistakes with your equations. It’s not a time machine you’ve built, but a bomb, and it’s going to blow up the universe."

"You can’t save your daughter," Casey said. "Its against the laws of time."

"Then so what?"

The Doctor looked momentarily stunned. "Excuse me? You can’t save your daughter, but if you continue, you’ll blow up the universe."

"Let it blow up, what do I care." Professor Kronots said angrily. "If I can’t have my daughter, what do I care for the universe?"

The Doctor looked flustered. But Casey stepped in.

"I know how you feel. When I lost my Mom and Dad, I felt like I didn’t want the universe to go on either. But it gets better."

"I don’t care," the Professor said, but he said it gently.

"Listen," Casey said, "you can’t bring your daughter back. But we can bring you to your daughter. We’ll do that, if you just promise not to use your machine."

"How can you do that," the Professor said.

"Because," Casey said, "we are time travellers too. And our time machine works."

*****************

Casey, the Doctor and the Professor crouched in the bushes watching the children at play. 

"That’s her," Professor Kronots said, "That’s my daughter. The blonde one. She looks so happy."

The Doctor whispered, "we’re breaking the laws of time by being here."

"I don’t care," the Professor said. "I want to go to her."

"No," the Doctor said.

But it was too late. Professor Kronots had stepped out of the bushes and was striding towards the children. The blonde girl looked up, gave a cry, and started running towards him, screaming ‘Daddy.’

The Doctor and Casey followed.

Professor Kronots swept her up in his arms. "Hello Muffin," he said, "I’ve missed you so much."

Muffin laughed. "We saw each other at breakfast, silly!"

"It feels like a lot longer to me," Professor Kronots said. 

"Who are these people," Muffin asked.

"They’re friends," Professor Kronots said, "just friends who helped me drop by to see you."

"Okay," she said, "do you want to play with us."

"No time," the Doctor shook his head.

"I wish we could have all the time in the world," Professor Kronots told her, 

"but I have to get back to work. We have the world to save."

He put her down, and watched sadly as she ran back to join her friends.

"When?" The Doctor asked softly.

"Tomorrow," the Professor said.

"I’m sorry."

Casey reached out to hug the Professor.

********************

"This is really amazing," Professor Kronots was saying. The Doctor was showing him the Tardis.

"Thank you," the Doctor said.

"It’s a shame about the laws of time," Professor Kronots said. "Wouldn’t it be so much better if we could simply rewrite the past to suit us."

"We could save my parents," Casey said. "Your daughter."

"And we'll the earth itself, this one time. But where would it stop?" The Doctor answered. 

"That’s the question, isn’t it," Professor Kronots replied. He shook his head to change the subject and then peered closely at the Tardis console.

"This really is such an amazing machine," he said. "But I have a question?"  
"We’re coming in for a landing," the Doctor said. "Here, let me take care of this...."

********************

The Tardis materialized in the Generator room, near a doorway. It was tiny inside the immense cavernous space. The towering generator in the center of the room loomed, electrical fields beginning to build up around its cables and antenna.

*******************

"And time to spare," said the Doctor, with deep satisfaction. He turned to the Professor.

"You were saying."

"Yes," the Professor said, "when I was working out the math for my time machine, the big problem was stability. I needed to stabilize it somehow, but I couldn’t work out how."

"Ahh," the Doctor said.

"How do you stabilize yours?"

The Doctor pressed a stud. A large glowing crystal emerged from the Tardis console and hung in the air.

"This is a static crystal, it’s mined from the hearts of collapsed stars from the beginning of the universe. It projects a field that we use to stabilize the time flux, allowing us to move through time and space."

"Remarkable," the Professor said. Stepping away from the Doctor. He spied a wrench on the floor and bent to retrieve it. "I think you dropped this."

"Yes," the Doctor replied looking at the crystal. "Without it, the Tardis couldn’t do more than short hops. Why---"

Savagely, Professor Kronots swung the wrench hard into the back of the Doctor’s head. The Doctor collapsed in a heap.

"Stop!" Casey yelled, leaping on Professor Kronots. But he swung the wrench at her, sending her tumbling over the inert body of K9. He turned to the Tardis console, and smashed at it violently, freeing the crystal and pulling it into his arms.

"Wait!" The Doctor called, trying to struggle to his feet. Professor Kronots kicked him down again, and grabbed Casey by the hair.

"Don’t try to follow me Doctor," he snarled, "this girl is my hostage."

"What are you doing?" The Doctor mumbled.

Casey cried out. "We took you to see your daughter, we had a deal."

"A deal," Professor Kronots snarled. "All that power, and all you do is take trips. Thanks, yes, thanks for showing me my daughter. But thanks for showing me what you can do, what I can do, for proving the power of time travel."

He dragged Casey out of the Tardis, pulling her across the floor towards his towering flux generator. 

"The laws of time..." Professor Kronots spat. "Bah. With time travel, you can do anything. Rewrite any moment of history. Rewrite my own history, make myself more successful, pass on the secrets when I'm young, become rich, become faster, stronger. I can rewrite everyone's history. Laws of time? I’ll be the laws of time. I will be god."

 

COMMERCIAL BREAK

 

ACT THREE

"You’re mad," Casey cried out, struggling in Kronots arms as he dragged her across the floor towars the Flux Tower.

"Mad? Or Genius? I knew my Time Machine wouldn’t work," Kronots told her. "I needed to stabilize it, and I couldn’t. But I knew that if I could make a time machine, so could others. So I turned my time machine into a bomb."

"You blew up the universe on purpose?" Casey asked.

"Of course," Professor Kronots laughed.

"But why?"

"To lure you here. It was a trap! I knew that if I created a time explosion, that another time traveller would be drawn here to stop it, and then I’d be able to take what I needed!"

"Professor," Carl and Tom appeared, "what’s going on. Is that girl bothering you?"

"He’s crazy," Casey said. "He killed the Doctor."

In the distance, the Doctor appeared in the doorway of the Tardis, holding a cloth to his head. Seeing Casey and Kronots with the security guard, he called out "Stop him!"

But Kronots threw Casey down and smashed the security guards with the wrench. They went down, stunned. Casey tried to scramble away, but Kronots, caught her hair and continued dragging her to his machine.

"I’m not finished with you," Kronots told her, "I can use a junior time traveller. Join me."

"I’ll never join you," Casey cried. "Help me, Doctor!"

The Doctor was staggering towards them, visibly badly injured.

"Join me and I’ll save your parents," Kronots promised, "or refuse and I’ll wipe them out so they never existed."

He reached the control room for the Flux Generator tower. Dropping the wrench, he quickly entered the key code. The door opened. Flinging Casey forward, he stepped in and slammed the door.

An instant later, the Doctor was at the door, his face visible through the porthole window, hammering at its surface.

"Listen to me," the Doctor said, "your calculations were wrong, you made too many mistakes in the design. You got the gist of it right. But, your time machine.... It’s not shielded. If you try to use it, you’ll destroy this building, the world, you’ll destroy yourself...."

Professor Kronots laughed as he handcuffed Casey to a crash couch, and began hooking up the crystal to his time machine.

"Don’t lie to a liar, Doctor," he replied. "It won’t work. I’m a better liar than you. And I’ll be a better time traveller than you." 

"You’ll destroy the universe," the Doctor called."

Professor Kronots paused, his features lit by the glow of accumulating energies, he looked beattiffic... or satanic. 

"So what? I’ll be a God. I’ll just make a new one."

A hum began to build.

The Doctor had vanished from the porthole.

The Doctor was rushing away, stumbling and staggering away from the   
Flux Tower. He sank to his knees.

Tom, the security guard, appeared in front of him, the side of his face swollen.

"He killed Carl," the guard said. "Broke his skull."

The Doctor looked up. 

"He’ll kill us all," the Doctor said, reaching up to him. "We have one chance, help me get to the Tardis."

Tom, the Guard, hauled the Doctor to his feet and got his arm around his shoulder. Lightning was beginning to arc all across the cavernous room.   
Pieces of machinery were starting to float into the air. A monstrous hum   
began to build as the two men stumbled towards the Tardis.

"What’s going on?" Tom said, as they staggered into the Tardis. 

The Doctor flung himself at the console, and began flicking levers and pushing buttons. He inspected a readout and checked his watch.

"Professor Kronots," the Doctor said, "is a genius. But he’s also mad. That’s a bad combination. He’s managed to build an unshielded time machine."  
"Is that bad?"

"It’s the worst. A Time Bomb is bad enough, but what he’s turned it into now.... it may unravel the fabric of reality."

"That sounds bad."

"If destroying the universe is bad... Then you’re right. I’d use a stronger word."

"What is this?"

"This is my time machine," The Doctor checked his instruments again. The Tardis began to make its grinding noise.

"Can you use yours to stop his?"

"Not since he took the stabilizer crystal. I’m afraid not. I can only do short hops. We’re liable to be destroyed along with the rest of the universe."

"That sounds really bad."

"Now you’re getting it. But we have a chance."

"K9," the Doctor called, "re-activate."

"Boss! Sensors indicate you’ve broken the laws of time. I am compelled to take command of the Tardis and return you to Gallifrey!"

"Not now, K9", the Doctor snapped, "extend your sensors."

"Hey, your robot dog talks."

"Boss!" K9 said, "there is a catastrophic time implosion in the vicinity. I suggest relocating the Tardis!"

"We can’t escape, K9," the Doctor said, "we have to do something else. I need your help."

"Can I help too?" Tom said, "I don’t want the universes to end."

"Sure," the Doctor said handing Tom a wrench, "hold this."

"Orders Boss!" K9 called.

"The Stabilizer Crystal has been taken to the other time machine," the Doctor explained. "But it radiates a stability field. All we have to do is move the Tardis into the field."

"But the other time vehicle is unshielded, we will both be destroyed by the uncontained energies," K9 pointed out.

"But the Tardis is shielded, and we can use that to control the energies, drain them off harmlessly."

"The other time machine will still be destroyed."

"We’ll deal with that problem. Let’s save the universe first."

"Launching as ordered," K9 said. 

The Tardis’ time rotor began to glow. The grinding sound of the Tardis began. It vanished from its location.

"What do I do now, Doctor," Tom yelled, hanging onto the console. 

The Doctor pointed. "Hit that light!"

The Tardis rematerialized in front of the door of the Flux Tower. Both time machines began to glow, and fade away. All around them, lightning and purple light were arcing, and a slow sound of an explosion was roaring.  
Inside Professor Kronots chamber, Casey managed to get free of her cuffs. She rushed to the Crystal, knocking it from its mounting. 

"Damn you!" Professor Kronots cried. He leaped on her, bearing her to the ground. His hands reached for her throat as the chamber began to break apart. And then they were both dissolved in light.

*****************

For a moment, Casey found herself floating in light, all the components and machines of the chamber floating away from her faster and faster, until she was all alone in a white void. From somewhere in the far distance, she could hear the voice of Professor Kronots screaming, but it faded away.

"Doctor," she cried out.

"Casey," came his voice. 

And then once again, she dissolved into light.

******************

A massive red sun hung on the horizon, its face blotched with sunspots, almost close enough to touch. It dominated the sky, a hundred times larger than it should be. But despite its size, the sky was full of stars, as if its light was not strong enough to wash them out.

Casey stood in a ragged T-shirt and cut offs, holding a makeshift spear. She stood at the edge of an immense dead sea, the oily waters rising and falling. Behind her, the landscape was barren, jagged rocks. She picked along the debris of the shore.

"The final days of Earth," the Doctor’s voice came behind her, "not a pleasant place."

She turned around, swinging wildly.

The Doctor stood there. But not the Doctor she knew. His face was lined with age and care. His hair was snow white. His coat was torn and crudely patched in places. He rested his weight on a bronze cane.

"Doctor," she said.

He smiled, opening his arms. 

"Yes, it’s me, finally. I’ve finally found you."

She rushed into his arms, and they hugged. She could feel the frailty in his body.

"You are old," she said, "you’ve gotten so old."

"Time does that to us all," he whispered. "I’ve spent a long, long time searching for you. I promised I’d find you, even if it took the rest of my life. And it has."

"I thought..." She looked up at him, tears in her eyes.

"I’d never abandon you," he said, "you know that. I promised your parents."

She laid her head against his chest.

"I’m so sorry."

"So am I," he said. "But now it’s time to go. I don’t have much longer."

"Yes," she said, "let’s go home."

He hesitated. "I’m afraid I’m not what I used to be," he said, "may I lean on you, on our way back."

"Of course," she said, "you could always lean on me."

He put his arm around her shoulder, trying not to put too much weight on her. Her legs bent a little, but she straightened. In the distance was the Tardis, visibly dilapidated, paint faded and peeling, windows broken, but still a welcome site.

 

*****************

Back on Earth, in the Present, the Tardis sat in the middle of a huge crater, its surface as smooth as glass.

A little ways away, the Doctor sat on a small stool, staring at the smoking ruin that was the last fragments of Professor Kronots time machine.  
He wrung his hands together, his face wet with tears.

"I’ll find you Casey. Somehow, I’ll find you. Even if it takes me the rest of my life, I’ll find you and bring you back. I promise."

"Doctor?" The voice came from behind him.

He turned.

"You're young again," she said.

It was Casey, her clothes a little charred, a little ragged, but looking fine. With a happy cry, the Doctor turned and rushed forward, sweeping her up in his arms, spinning her around.

"How? How is it possible? You were catapulted through the time stream, you could have wound up anywhere?"

Casey laughed.

"It was you, Doctor," she replied, "you finally found me."

He sobered. Setting her down.

"I did, did I? And I set you down right here. Because this is where I made the promise."

He nodded.

"How did I look?" He paused. "No, don’t tell me. All I need to know is that sometime in the future, I found you. And that you are here with me now."

He paused again.

"Casey," he said, "another promise. I don’t know how, but someday, I’ll find a way to save your parents. I’ll give them back to you."

"Oh Doctor," she said.

"Boss!" A metallic voice came about. K9 floated out of the Tardis.

"Come to collect me for Gallifrey," the Doctor asked. "Well, I don’t mind. It’s turned out better than I could have hoped. Let’s go."

"Boss!" K9 repeated, "I have been damaged. My memory banks have been deleted for the period of the last two days. I can only assume nothing of significance occurred, and there is nothing to report."  
Indeed.

Tom appeared following.

"Your robot dog asked me to hit him with a wrench," Tom said.

"Unquestionably, that must be what damaged my memory banks. The Human must have misunderstood my instruction."

"I didn’t misunderstand..."

"It’s okay, Tom."

"Boss, shall I assist the human in returning home?"

"Certainly."

Tom hesitated. "Carl..."

The Doctor nodded. "I'm sorry," he said, "there's nothing I can do."

"He was a good man," Tom said sadly.

"I'm sure he was," the Doctor replied.

"Tom nodded. "The Professor... he wasn't bad you know. Not at first. But sometimes, when you lose something, and can't get past it..."

"I know," the Doctor said gently.

They watched K9 float off with the former security guard.

The Doctor turned to Casey and said "His memory banks are shielded, an atom bomb couldn’t damage them."

"But then?" Casey asked.

The Doctor just smiled.

"Okay, so what now, Doctor?"

He smiled again, and clapped her on the shoulder.

"Breakfast? You can work up an appetite saving the universe!"

COMMERCIAL

 

EPILOGUE

The Eiffel Tower is visible in the background. A mime comes into view, trying to get out of an invisible box. Across the street, at an open air café, the Doctor and Casey are having breakfast. The Tardis sits on a street corner.

"Why Paris?" Casey asked.

The Doctor dug into his breakfast. "Well, it’s breakfast time here."

"But you have a time machine, you could take us to breakfast time anywhere?"

The Doctor shrugged.

"Sometimes it’s just better to take the long way. We appreciate it more. Short cuts ... you lose track of things sometimes. Sometimes you lose your path, sometimes you lose yourself."

"Was it really about his daughter, do you think?"

The Doctor thought about it. "No one starts out being a monster. Or at least, I hope no one does, that would be sad. I think it was about his daughter, right at the beginning. But then he lost sight of it. He became so tangled up with his time machine, with what he could do or thought he could do, that he lost his way. He forgot why he was doing it."

"Could we have saved him? I mean, if you could have gone back to a moment and said ‘you’re losing your way’?"

"I don’t know. Sometimes people don’t want to be saved. No one starts out as a monster, but some people decide to become monsters."

"How do you become a monster?"

The Doctor shrugs, "Maybe because they break the rules. Maybe because they stop caring. I’m not sure."

A hologram screen materialized out of thin air in front of the Doctor and Casey’s table. Within it were Magnar, the stern old man, and Cellus, the blue skinned lady, both in their time lord robes.

"Doctor," Magnar said, "you have violated the laws of time!"

The Doctor thought about it for a second, "Well, someone had too."

"Doctor," Magnar thundered, " you’re in a great deal of trouble. The laws of time are absolute. We have proof. And you tried to hide it by tampering with the Tardis memory logs."

"That was K9," the Doctor said, "I didn’t touch the logs."

"Well, he did if for you!"

The Doctor shrugged.

"A Time Bomb was detonated, the Universe was imperilled."

"So?"

"So, it had to be stopped, and the only way to stop it was to break the laws of time."

"You admit your crime!"

The Doctor took a sip from his cup.

"Now, here’s the thing. I can’t believe it hasn’t happened before. I mean, I can’t believe that Professor Kronots was the first man in the history of the Universe to build a time bomb.... After all, how do we even know what a Time Bomb is. Someone must have done it before. Maybe a lot of someones."

"Where are you going with this, Doctor?" Cellus asked sweetly.

"But if a Time bomb was actually built and detonated... Then there wouldn’t be a universe, would there? Over and over. There shouldn’t be anything left. Unless we keep going back and breaking the laws of time to put it right, to save the universe."

"That’s dangerous speculation, Doctor," Magnar warned.

"Indeed."

There was a long drawn out pause.

"We’ll overlook it ... Just this one time." Magnar said. "But I’m watching you, Doctor."

The Doctor shrugged.

"In any event," Cellus said, "we must still recall you back to Gallifrey. Your stay on Earth is over, Doctor."

"Why?" The Doctor asked bluntly.

"You don’t have the right to ask-" Magnar began to bluster. Cellus put up her hand.

"The Daleks are coming to Earth, Doctor. Whole fleets of them. You must be gone before their warships arrive. We cannot have our technology falling into their hands."

"Everywhere the Daleks go," the Doctor said, "the Time Lords withdraw."  
"Imagine Daleks with the power of Time Travel," Magnar said. "They would destroy the Universe, they would rule all of time and space."

"That’s an awful thought," the Doctor agreed. "And you’ll stop that by running away?"

"We cannot risk it," Cellus said.

"Of course not," replied the Doctor.

"So you’ll return to Gallifrey immediately."

"I’m having breakfast right now."

Magnar visibly restrained his temper.

"You’ll return to Gallifrey after breakfast."

The Doctor seemed to think about it. "No."

"What? How dare you?"

"Why not dare? Why shouldn’t I dare? What has not daring every gotten anyone? We’ve never dared to face the Daleks, and what has it gotten the Time Lords except to surrender the universe an inch at a time. Maybe I should dare, just to see what it’s like."

Magnar was almost apoplectic. Cellus stepped forward.

"Doctor, these are Dalek fleets. You cannot win, you must know that. They will destroy Earth, with or without you. And if you stay to fight them, they will destroy you too."

The Doctor nodded solemnly. "I know."

"Then why?"

"Because...." the Doctor paused to collect his thoughts, "because sometimes, you have to do the right thing, even if you don’t think you can win. Because these people depend on me, and I won’t let them down."  
Cellus nodded.

"You’ll get no help from the Time Lords," she said.

"I know."

She blinked out, leaving only Magnar in the floating hologram screen. He rubbed his fingers together, looked around uncertainty.

"If that is your choice, then so be it," he paused. "All I can say is good luck, Doctor. For what it’s worth, I have always admired you."

His screen blinked out. The Doctor took a bite out of his sandwich.

"The Daleks are coming," Casey said.

"Mmm hmm."

"Can you stop them?" Casey asked.

"No, of course not. Nothing can. You heard them."

"So ... What are you going to do?"

"This is a terrific sandwich," the Doctor said, "I love breakfast in Paris, don’t you?"

"What about the Daleks?"

"They don’t appreciate sandwiches. Breakfast would be wasted on them."

"Then why?"

The Doctor put down his napkin and stared at her.

"Because," he said, "the Daleks are monsters. I don’t know if they began that way, or if they chose it. I don’t know if they stopped caring, or if they started breaking the rules. But they’re monsters, and monsters have to be stopped."

The Doctor took a breath.

"And because, I am not a monster, and I don’t ever intend to be one."  
　  
END


	21. Talking Trash on the Daleks:   An Interview with Michael Hirsh, Producer of the Nelvana Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael Hirsh, one of Nelvana's owners and the producer of their Doctor Who series talks about his participation in the show.

Excerpts from an August 28, 1992, with Michael Hirsh, one of the founders of Nelvana, and showrunner for the first season of the animated Doctor Who.

Q: A lot of people comment that the first season was actually two seasons back to back. The first half was light and comic, the second half was gritty and dark.

A: That certainly wasn’t the plan going in, and it certainly wasn’t good business.

Q: What do you mean?

A: It made it harder to keep the audience. It’s better to mix it up, to alternate the light and the dark. Look at it this way, if its mixed up, you have some kids who like the light episodes, some that like the dark episodes. If this week, they get an episode that’s not light or dark as they like, they’ll stick around and come back for the next episode... Which will give them what they like. But if its all light, then the kids who like the darker episodes never buy in, and if it gets all dark, then the kids who liked the light episodes will drift away.

Q: So what happened?

A: Daleks mainly.

Q: What do you mean?

A: Well, a little background is required. The BBC owns the rights to Doctor Who. But they don’t own all of it. Some of their characters are the creations of contracted writers, and those writers will own those creations. The BBC only owns what its staff creates. 

Q: Daleks were a big part of Doctor Who, particularly of Doctor Who merchandising, which was important, but they were actually owned by a man named Terry Nation. So we had to strike a separate deal with Terry Nation, one of his conditions was script approval and a certain number of writing credits. The problem was that Nation was quite busy in Hollywood, and so it took him a while to get his approvals and to get the scripts in. In essence, we had an outside story editor running the ship when it came to the Daleks.

A: We actually intended to introduce the Daleks early on. They were the flagship as far as toy merchandising goes, so you want them early on, and then you want to keep bringing them back every few episodes.

Q: But the approvals from Nation were so slow, and he had so many issues, that we just had to keep pushing the Dalek stories back further and further until they were literally all in the second half of the season. And then we had to move other episodes around to fill in the production gaps, it just threw our plans into chaos. 

A: And it made it lot harder to sell the toys. They’re sitting around in stores gathering dust because none of the kids knew what they were. And then all of a sudden, all the episodes come out just jammed up together.

Q: So Nation was being difficult?

A: (Sucks air through his teeth) I wouldn’t put it like that. I think that the thing with Terry Nation was really, that the Daleks were the only significant thing he’d ever done as a writer, so he was going to be very protective of them, they were his legacy, and a fair bit of his income.

Q: There’s also Blake’s 7 and Survivors.

A: I don’t know those programs.

Q: Blake’s 7 was a sort of dystopic Star Trek, it was quite successful in England in the early 80's....

A: A british version Star Trek? Okay, whatever. Anyway, apart from things like that, Daleks were really all that he had, and he was trying to make it in Hollywood in television and I gather it wasn’t terribly successful. So under those circumstances he’s going to be very protective of his property, perhaps over-protective. He had very definite ideas of how his Daleks should be treated, and he didn’t understand what we were doing, or the deadlines or limitations we were working under.

Q: I remember he was very serious about them, he thought that they were very serious, you couldn’t do anything light or funny with them, because that wasn’t appropriate to the tone of the Daleks as he saw them. He rejected several story ideas out of hand, and for our part, we had to reject some of his story proposals. 

A: Why?

Q: Davros for one. We just weren’t going to buy that.

A: What about Davros?

Q: He offered that character to us, as a separate license. He actually pushed it quite hard. But I didn’t see any point to paying twice for what was essentially the same property.

A: Ok.

Q: Again, it was that he had very strong ideas, very protective of his property. In fact, we had a bit of trouble there. There was an episode that was a teaser for the Daleks, at the end, there were some Dalek sculptures, it was intended to lead in. Maybe ten seconds. He demanded compensation. We had to sort it out with him.This is what I mean by over-protective.

A: And some of his proposals were just too big. We were doing an American children’s cartoon, not a British serial. We weren’t going to do a three or four part story. I think his first proposal was to make all four dalek episodes a single continuous serial. That was never going to fly. In the end, I think we did a two part story, and that was a joint decision.

Q: But he had a very different view of what you could or should do with Daleks, compared to what we needed to do. Even some of the things that made it in, some of that got us in trouble. Casey got tortured. He had script approval, we’d have to send each script and wait, and of course he’d send it back marked up in red, and then we’d have to send him the revisions and wait... It went on. It played hell with our schedule. The season's last Dalek story, the two part episode, was delayed so long we barely made our airdates. We didn't go into production until after the London trip. I remember Maurice came back heartbroken, and you can hear it in his performance on those episodes.

A: It sounds like you didn't like him?

Q: I didn't say that. I'm sure he's quite a fine gentleman, it was just that circumstances lead to frictions. He was aggressive in protecting his one property as anyone in his position would be, as I would be. And on our side, we had our own needs. I'm sure... no from his career, I know that he is highly professional.

A: Would you work with him again?

Q: You're teasing me! Of course in this business, you can never say no. You never know what the future would bring. But I don't think he's interested in working in animation in the future, so it's unlikely. And really, our approaches are quite different and perhaps not complementary. Let me just say I have nothing but respect for Terry Nation as a professional and as a writer and I wish him well.

A: Is that Hollywoodspeak for 'Burn in hell you flaming bastard'?

Q: (holds up finger) You should leave that out of the interview. Okay? Perhaps we should move on.

A: Some people say that the Dalek stories were the best parts of the animated series.

Q: I’ve heard that. I don’t know. I don’t know that I would agree. I think that they’re the most well known. Back in 1989, we released a couple of VHS tapes - The Cyberman episodes on one tape, and all the Dalek stories on another. They sold quite well, particularly the Dalek one. But really, it’s a matter of taste. If I had to choose my own favourites, I think I’d pick other episodes.

A: Were the Daleks hard to animate?

Q: In some ways. They were a very complicated drawing, very textured, all those bumps and slats and rings. That was another row we had, we couldn’t simplify the drawings. The BBC unfortunately was with Nation on that one.

A: But apart from that, it got easier rapidly, The Daleks had no legs, no facial features, their bodies were immobile, and were almost identical all the way around.. The eyestalk swung or the arms would wave but that was it. The movement cycles were remarkably simple. You could practically animate them with a photocopier. It really was their saving grace.

Q: You don’t sound like a big fan of the Daleks?

A: Do I sound harsh? I don’t mean to. I think, on reflection, that we had expectations of the Daleks that they simply could not meet. The Daleks were very much a product of the 60's, and particularly of British culture in the 60's.... Dalekmania and all that. I think we had some notion that something of that phenomena would come about here, and truthfully, it hadn’t crossed over in the 60's so I think we were fooling ourselves to think it would cross in the 80's. 

Q: And of course, when you look at Doctor Who toys.... We expected that there’d be a full range that we could just import, but really, it was almost exclusively Daleks, which meant we had to put a lot of weight on them. So the Daleks, poor things, really had a lot riding on them, and in hindsight, I think we were unrealistic that first season, and I think that lead us to negotiate terms with Mr. Nation that we might not have agreed to otherwise.

A: The animated Doctor Who used lot of robot races. The Daleks, the Cybermen, Trods, Quarks....

Q: (chuckles) Yes we did.

A: Why?

Q: Simplicity for one thing. They were generally simpler than living characters, so easier to draw and colour. And robots.... they're all supposed to look alike so that makes drawing tasks simpler - you do one, build up a library of motion cycles and then copy, you can have as many as you want. And you can use them more.

A: Henchmen, background characters, of course they'd look alike, but your audience would catch you there, so you had a choice. You either just reproduced and hope it didn't attract attention. Or you'd have to invest drawing time in some individuality.

Q: So from a technical point, yes, we liked robots lot! (laughs)

A: And the kids liked robots...

Q: Oh certainly! Children loved robots. That's R2D2 and C3PO from Star Wars, and Robbie the Robot from Lost in Space and Forbidden Planet. Dinosaurs, Robots, there are some things you can rely on children going crazy for.

A: There's also that we could do more with robots. Sneak things past the censors. You could do things in the 80's with robots that you could not do with live characters, blow them up, good robots, bad robots.... they weren't alive, so they couldn't be killed or feel pain like 'live characters' That was a concern. You always had to be so careful with what you could show on Saturday morning animation.

Q: Of all the Robots that you had in the three seasons of the cartoon, which one was your favourite? And why?

A: Besides K9? (laughs)

Q: Besides K9, yes.

A: That's a very good question. Let me tell you my favourite...


End file.
